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f-iift-

THE BETTER SELF.

a

By the same Author.
THE GENTLE LIFE.

ist Series, 21st Edition; 2nd Series, 6th Edition.

The essence which underlies all true chivalry is in these
pages. Truth, honour, uprightness are aM there ; tenderness,
pathos, and charitable feeling, and a resolute cheerfulness of
tone which tells of one who has suffered and struggled, and
grown wiser and cheerier for his struggles. Altogether the
book is sterling. — Literary Churchman.

His notion of Life is of the noblest and truest order. A
capital specimen of what may be done by honest reading, high
feeling, and a cultivated intellect. — Daily News.

For beauty of style and directness of purpose, a surprisingly
just composition, full of truth and persuasiveness. — Morning
Post.

An excellent object sought to be attained by some pleasant
papers. — Spectator.

THE BETTER SELF:

ESSAYS FOR HO ME- LIFE.

BY

&»..«*-" HAIN FRI SWELL,

AUTHOR OF "THE GENTLE LIFE.*'

The State, or Individual [or Writer], thrives the best who dives
deepest down into the masses of the people, and adapts itself to
the wants of the greatest number.— W. £. Gladstone.

That which is nearest us touches us most. The passions rise
higher at domestic than at Imperial tragedies. — Samuel Johnson.

Henry S. King & Co.,

65 CCRNHILL, AND 12 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

1875.

[Ail rights reserved.)

THIS VOLUME
IS WITH GREAT RESPECT AND BY PERMISSION

DEDICATED TO

THE BARONESS BURDETT-COUTTS,

WHOSE CONSTANT AIM

HAS BEEN TO HELP OTHERS TO ATTAIN

A BETTER SELF.

*3

PREFACE.

THIS book by no means concerns the best self
or the highest ideal, but simply a move upwards
towards something a little higher than the dead
flat upon which we have, of late, settled. To those
who live noble and high lives even in imagination,
which is by far the most trodden path, the essays
in this volume will seem but tame and homely. Is
this, they will ask — this life of ordinary courtesy,
simple and pure affection, and humdrum honesty — the
better life ? The answer is, Yes, it is ; because
pretence, sham, and disguise are as rife now as in
the days when the Voice cried in the wilderness and
pointed out the straight path, which was, even to the
soldier — not desertion of his work nor brand-new

viii PREFACE.

heroism — but simple duty to oppress no one, and " to
be content with his pay." That was the better life
to him.

It would be easier to advise higher things. In
all things pretence and swagger predominate to-
day ; in few matters more than in literature, and in
religious, and so-called pious, literature especially.
The self-sacrificing but coldly unnatural person of
the tracts, the very best of them, translated into the
ordinary cold-hearted religionist, who always looks
after his own comfort, and whose words are fire
while his deeds are ice, has done more harm to the
faith than thousands of opponents. There are not
two or three, but dozens of so-called Christian pub-
lications, that never speak soul to soul, and that
young men look at with a sickening, and good
men with a mournful sinking sensation of the
mental stomach, which proves at once that that
unerring guide, the conscience, has found them out
to be — cant. Nor are they alone. This exaggerative
assumption — this adulteration of the milk of human
kindness by something which will atone for its
miserable dilution by a rich smack — this silk surface

PREFACE. ix

to the cotton dress pervades all literature ; criticism
of art, and that which touches the highest things
especially. Something of the rejective sickness
spoken of may certainly be felt when we read an
article in an aesthetic review, by Brown-Brown on
the picture or poem of Smith-Smith who is of his
own school. Mild indeed is this phrase if we
recall the bare and bald indecencies of the slums
— I speak with no exaggeration — and the nasti-
nesses of foul-mouthed vulgar boys so freely used
in a halting prose by an American poet, which
has been praised as the high fruit of genius, and
the soul music of the future.

But we taste nothing pure. The great dread of
the present age is adulteration. There is no man
who can assure you that the cod-liver oil or quinine
on which the life of his dearest one may depend is
genuine and without admixture ; the high passion of
the poet is simulated ; we strut where we should
walk, and talk goody rather than are good. Hence
the present volume may seem to have taken a quiet
and lowly tone indeed when it rehearses to those
who are so pure on the platform, and so hard at

x PREFACE,

home or in business, the few simple graceful realities
which form the better self.

It may be necessary to add, that owing to a
long and constant illness, which has rendered daily
work always irksome and sometimes impossible, this
work has been a long time on hand, as some of the
Essays will bear witness. Its name was to have
been " The Higher Life," but as that title was subse-
quently appropriated by another writer — the Rev.
Baldwin Brown — the present one has been adopted,
and, consequently, a more subdued tone has been
taken throughout the volumes.

Fair Home,

Bexley, January, 1875.

CONTENTS.

i»a<;k

L Beginning at Home ... ... ... ••• *

II. The very Young Children ... ... 12

III. The Girls at Home ... ... ... ... 23

IV. The Wife's Mother ... ... ... 35

V. Our own Flesh and Blood ... ... ... 47

VI. Feeling for Others ... ... ... 58

VII. Friends and no Friends ... ... ... 69

VIII. Advice Gratis ... ... ... ... 81

IX. Pride in the Family ... ... ... ... 91

X. Sneers and III- nature ... ... ... 101

XI. Discontent and Grumbling ... ... ... 114

XII. The Luxury of Woe ... ... ... 126

XIII. Grievances ... ... ... ... ... 136

XIV. Delicate Feelings ... ... ... ... 146

XV. The Proper Touch ... ... ... 157

<

Xll

CONTENTS.

PAGE

XVI.

Looking Forward

... 166

XVII.

Good Nature, Temper, and Humour

177

XVIII.

The Contented Mind

•

... 189

XIX.

Domestic Economy

200

XX.

Expectancy ...

... 210

XXI.

On Keeping People Down

221

XXII.

Generous Approval ...

•• 233

XXIII.

Likes and Dislikes

245

XXIV.

On Falling Out

... 255

XXV.

Pretension and Sentiment

267

XXVI.

False Pretences

... 279

XXVII.

i EACfi ... ... ... ... .,

290

THE BETTER SELF.

f

i

I.

BEGINNING A T HOME.

Where better to begin ? We are in " a parlous state, shep-
herd ! " as Touchstone tells the simple William in the
forest, and the nations around are perhaps not better than
we. The best men amongst us have seen this.

" We are a people drowned in hypocrisy, saturated with
it to the bone. Alas ! it is even so, in spite of far other
intentions at one time, and of a languid, dumb, but ineradi-
cable inward protest against it still: and we are beginning to
be universally conscious of that horrible condition, and by
no means disposed to die in behalf of continuing it I It has
lasted long, that unblessed process; process of 'lying to
sleep in the Devil's Pickle ' for above two hundred years
(I date the formal beginning of it from the year 1660,
and desperate return of Sacred Majesty, after such an

2 THE BETTER SELF.

a

ousting as it had got) ; process which appears to be now
about complete."

Thus far outspoken Carlyle. You will not find that
the newspapers generally tell you this, those especially with
the largest circulation in the world — those with sparkling
leaders, making all comfortable, and urging that it is well
with us — speaking peace, look you, where there is no peace.
" Hypocrisy ! " they would cry ; " why, there is no such
good honest fellow in the world as John Bull ! " Mean-
time, how goes it ? " Fifty years ago," said a friend to
Carlyle, " in the middle of Germany when you were going
to a shop to purchase, wise people would advise you : ' If
you can find an English article, buy that ; it will be a few
pence dearer, but it will prove itself a well-made, faithful,
and skilful thing — a comfortable servant and friend to you
for a long time — better buy that.' And now directly the
reverse advice is given : ' If you find an English article,
don't buy that ; that will be a few pence cheaper, but it will
prove only a more cunningly devised piece of mendacity
than any of the others — avoid that above all. 7 " *

Both of these pieces of advice are good and true. Here
is the advertising dodge result — the largest box of matches,

* In justice to our country one must say that much of the obloquy
on English goods is gained through forgeries of English trade marks,
and that where a fair price is paid, true English work is always, in
spite of grumblers, soundly good.

BEGINNING AT HOME. 3

that will not light ; the biggest knife, that will not cut ; the
cheapest axe, that flies in splinters, and cuts your leg
instead of the tree ; the largest, most illustrated, and worst
weekly periodical, that does not contain one wholesome
thought in it; the cheapest pound of soap, that will not
cleanse; and sugar sold at no.profit except on the sand mixed
with it, and the paper that wraps it, thick and heavy, bought
at a penny a pound and retailed at fourpence, and always
weighed with it. No wonder that when people practise
wholesale cheating we are all awake to the " dodges " of
trade. Each knows his own weakness ; each is therefore —
as we universally judge others by ourselves — painfully alive
to universal hypocrisy. Not cheapest, but best, should be
the tradesman's motto. There is such security, such happi-
ness, such bravery in doing a good thing and selling a good
thing. A good tradesman is a noble man if he gives good
measure, sells sound articles, and does his duty. He is a
wise man, too.

And now, how to get rid of Carlyle's accusation, which
is felt by all of us to be too true ? There is but one answer
— begin at home. Let us each make our homes true, take
a true view of life, ensure truth always and everywhere, pull
off the phantom sham ; rise, be men, be proud of being
working men, shopkeepers, poor parsons, writers, tradesmen,
or lawyers, so that we do our best and follow out — shrink-
ingly enough, perhaps, at first — what we know to be true.

4 THE BETTER SELF.

An evening paper has lately been sneering at the educa-
tion of working men, " our future masters. " But surely they
are educated— educated enough to know the false from the
true, the humbug from the honest man ; they have a heart
and conscience within them ; and, appealed to generously,
trusted without suspicion, they will not fail us. But they
and the middle classes are getting wrong views of life in the
hurry of the world, and the general worship of riches, and
the race to make fortunes. Yet, the universal testimony
of rich men is, that the fortunes themselves are not worth
having; that moderate occupation is the best and the happiest
existence ; while rich and poor, wise and simple, all men
who have ever lived, so that they are honest, will tell you that
the real satisfaction worth having, unsurpassed, not to be
taken away in this world, and to be well rewarded in the
next, is to do your duty. Who in the lower class beats his
wife, terrifies his children, shames his neighbourhood, but
the poor lazy wretch who has not done his duty, and, angry
with himself, in some devil's fashion of quid pro quo, avenges
his self-inflicted unhappiness on others ? Who comes home
smiling, stays at home, does all the good he can, and makes
the place around him happy, but the man who has done
his duty, and who feels satisfied with himself? That's
the man of whom England is proud. That's the man who
does not rail against the rich, nor scold the aristocracy,
nor bellow down the Lords, because he knows that he is

BEGINNING AT HOME. 5

as good a Lord as any of them. He is the sort of man
who

" Would shake hands with the king upon his throne.
And think it honour to his Majesty ! "

And that is the man who would quietly require the king to
do his duty if need came, and would look that it were done,
too. He is the true Conservative who keeps up his own
worth, and adds materially to the dignity of the nation.
That man gets his strength from home ; it is what we do
there that concerns us most ; it is there that the virtues are
nursed, and the heart, at peace with itself, turns, as the
flower does to the sun, to the God of peace, and gains from
Him light and strength. Let us all be wisely selfish in
keeping up home and the home affections.

And, first, to the head of the house, the house-band of
our good old English and much-meaning tongue ; it is well
that he should be reverenced, with love. Foolish fathers
who vacate their dignities do not have hopeful sons. Don't
believe either in silly talking or viciously speaking fathers,
nor in those whose love never shines forth in pleasant
smiles. Napoleon loved the man who held with a steel
hand, covered with a silk glove ; so should the father be
gentle, but firm. Of the mother in a house, it is difficult to
speak otherwise than of one worthy of the very highest and
noblest esteem and affection. The father should always
pay a courtly deference to her, and his children will take

6 THE BETTER SELF.

their cue from him. This when the mother is a true one, a far
more usual case than the cheap wits whose cue it is to laugh
at commonplace virtues will allow. When the father shows
he respects and loves his wife, the children, too, love and
respect her. People may talk as much as they like about
new forms of female industry, and new branches of trade,
to give them an equal chance with man ; but the universal
desire and instinct shown by woman towards marriage —
much more so than by man — indicates that the true pro-
vince of woman is to be at home, the queen of the home.
The throne may be a poor one ; blankest poverty may sur-
round it, long struggles may have made it sad, fortune may
never have smiled upon it ; but when a woman has a hus-
band's love, when her children can and do arise and call
her blessed, then it is a throne indeed.

And for children. It will be an apocalypse to some to
insist that, under any faith or philosophy, to have, bring
up, and well educate children, is the chief end of life, which,
look you, is not man-ruling, teaching, preaching, governing ;
still less is it man-killing, drilling, and marching; nor is it
skating, dancing, billiard-playing, and bird-shooting wholly;
nor is it only a trading, cheating, and money-getting affair, but
to produce fine, well-limbed, well-minded, sound-hearted boys
and girls, and thence men and women. Well, as far as we
can judge, the great Creator desires souls purified by earthly
trials, and we opine that those who present a long list of

BEGINNING AT HOME. 7

such jewels to the King of kings, will have done notable
work.

Now-a-days people tell us that their children are held to
be impoverishing, and somewhat of a bore. "We push
them," say they, " a great deal too much off to school
masters;" and we think that what they say is true. "What
is the cause of this ? " asks a friend. " I am afraid that, if
we visit our neighbours, and ask the reason, we shall find that
the parents do not consider it their duty to attend to their
own children. " They fancy that if they send their children to
the Sunday school, and there let them be instructed in some
way as to their religion by the parson, and by the school-
master as to manners and letters, all will be well ; and this
lapse of duty on the parent's part makes the widening rent
between parent and child still wider. The people in the
United States and Australia are worse off than we are here.
Young men of forty in America and the English colonies are
called by their own lanky sons of fifteen " darned old forri-
ners." The young men soon feel themselves to be of value
there, and throw off parental authority. But here, also,
where the parents toil far into middle life for the benefit of
their children, the .case is no better. Every day the boys
and girls are increasing in forwardness, boldness, rudeness
and impudence. We don't say this merely to find fault with
the children themselves ; they know no better. Boys and
girls will ape and imitate men and women, if they are not

8 THE BETTER SELF.

taught to be children. The manners of men and women,
and the older fashions of speaking and acting which are
well enough in a man, look impudent, and are impudent,
in a boy, where bashfulness and modesty should be con-
spicuous. In all our great towns there are to be seen troops
of young boys and girls walking out, the boys following the
girls, chaffing, courting, quizzing, and indulging in worse
courses, at an age whereat their fathers and mothers were,
and their contemporaries and age-fellows of the better classes
are, scarcely out from the nursery.

Over fondness, insufficient authority, a fear of slapping a
child, or of using the rod early in life, whereby parents are
prevented from using it late, and a spendthrift anticipation
by the children of the pleasures of youth before they are
youths, have produced these results : —

(i.) After some years of boredom, the father and mother
are so bothered with their children that they want to get rid
of them. (2.) The children, not feeling the proper respect
for their parents, do not show it. (3.) A division exists in
the home, and universally, children, instead of being held to
be one of God's greatest blessings, are considered a misfor-
tune. " Ah, poor man ! he has so many children to bring
up," &c. The home then becomes not a home, but merely
a dull, cheerless place to sleep in, to rest at night in — no
more.

" I wish," says one of the victims to a rather different

BEGINNING AT HOME. 9

but analogous state of things to that above described, " that
Preachers and Teachers generally would imbue parents with
a sense of the duty of making home more cheerful? Our
friend then gives an account of his own experience, to show
us what kind of reform is necessary for parents to make
their homes "more lively and encouraging, so as to keep
their children from seeking pleasure and excitement else-
where." He draws a picture of a severe religious man of
fifty, a good firm man, no doubt, but one in whom the prin-
ciple of love is left out; a Dissenter and a teetotaller,
severely so as to both ; no argument is started but the father
overbearingly puts it down; the very mention of drink
" rouses his arguing power, and he becomes 9fFensive." He
hates little indulgences. Any novels, any dramatic readings
or entertainments are bad ; to enter a theatre or a music-hall
would be perdition. If bagatelle or cards were introduced
they would be thrown out of the window ; a draught, chess,
or domino board is equally hated, and of course banished.
In fact, this " powerful " example of ours has just rubbed
the bloom off the plums, and plucked up the flowers of life.
The children are good and industrious, but feel home to be
a prison. To get to the City at nine, to leave at seven, to
have tea, then to read a religious book, for the most part
stupidly written, seems to be the fate of the young men of
such families. Music is a frivolity, and although there are
two withdrawing-rooms and a piano, the rooms are empty

io THE BETTER SELF,

during the week days, and none of the graces of life are
allowed to flourish. On Sundays, of course, there is harder
work, hearing sermons and reading tracts ; and on Monday
the dull, sad week begins again.

This picture is from life : what shall we say of it ? Why,
that our severe man of fifty goes the right way to bring up
hypocrites. " On the sly," the young men smoke ; on the
sly, they run into music-halls; on the sly, they do worse
things. 'Tis no new thing. The old proverb says that
" Clergymen's sons always turn out badly." Why ? Because
the children are brought up surfeited with severe religion —
not with the gentle, true religion of Christ, who was himself
reproved by th.e prototypes of such severe men. In one of
Crabbe's tales, wherein he begins quaintly —

" Grave Jonas Kindred, Sybil Kindred's sire,
Was six feet high, and look'd six inches higher,"

that great painter of Nature shows how the sternness of the
father nearly spoils the child. 'Tis an old, old story; not
bad nature, but bad taste made it severe. Not always do
such foolish severities end with the tragedies of crime or
death. Bitter the reflection then, if the father has reflection.
Over the dead Absalom — a fair, beautiful body whence the
soul has fled, a casket whence the precious jewel is stolen — »
you may cry for ever, " Oh' Absalom, my son, my son !" — to
this earth he never can come back. But say the son does

BEGINNING AT HOME. n

not die, that his life remains, from how many is the priceless
jewel of life, purity, honour, honesty, stolen by those into
whose arms the cheerless home has driven them !

In a land which we are so fond of describing as being
filled with Homes, and as being especially the most home-
loving in the world, is it not useless to cry, " Behold how
good and how pleasant a thing it is to dwell together in
unity ! " The sister will be loved, honoured, and cherished ;
the father, having sacrificed himself for the children in
giving them his time, his love, his money, will find them
ready to lay down their lives for his. Was there ever a more
tender story than that of the Scottish henchman who went
into battle with seven tall sons, and who placed one after
another before his chief to shield him, and shouted out, as
each fell, " another for Hector," till the whole seven died at
the behest of the loyal old man ? Were they taught to shun
home as a sham, or a prison, or as something unpleasant ?
Did they not rather love it, though rough and rude as Lord
Lovat's barbarous hold, as the abode of truth and love,
kindliness, openness, and honesty, where smiles were plenti-
ful, and tears were wiped away, and hearts were strength-
ened, and father, mother, brothers, and sisters, formed a
sheaf of arrows, which, when bound together, could not
be injured by a giant, but if single could be broken by a
child !

12 THE BETTER SELF.

II.

THE VERY YOUNG CHILDREN.

In his amusing volumes, "From Waterloo to the Peninsula,"
in which with infinite spirit, curious learning, and a fidelity
which is almost photographic and completely marvellous,
the traveller puts before us all that he has seen; the author
gives us a picture of an orange tree blossoming in the neigh-
bourhood of the Escorial which we shall quote. • And when
we say that the traveller shows us "all that he has seen," we
must accord to him the rarest faculty of observation, and the
capacity of picking up more in ten minutes than an ordinary
traveller would in ten days. Each of us has some gift. A
boy we knew had the singular faculty of getting, in a wonder-
fully short space of time, all the meat out of the many thin
legs of a lobster — a feat which drives most of us to the verge
of despair; and certainly Mr. Sala has the faculty of getting
more out of any given country or scene than most people.
But to the picture : — "Here the oranges grow tame and the
orange trees grow wild; at this instant they are flowering, — a
heavenly sight to see. To behold an orange tree in full

THE VERY YOUNG CHILDREN. 13

bloom, with its triple panoply of leaves, flowers, and fruit, is
only equalled by that sight which is not to be seen out of
England, that of a still young and beautiful woman with a
little baby in her arms, and a grown-up daughter by her side.
And for the life of you, you can't tell which of the three looks
prettiest and comeliest"

A true and pretty sentence is that, and only to be written
by one who has looked upon small humanity with love; who
has in his heart' that fondness for children which most
Englishmen have. The baby, the manikin, the homunculus,
as we may choose to call it, rules the world; and yet in New
York and Paris they tell us babies are going out of fashion;
and in baby-loving England, too, there are certain classes
who regard children as a bore.

But baby rules the world for all that. He is the prin-
cipal being, although the softest and the smallest He does
nothing, — cannot, for the most part, speak, — merely crows,
and blows little bubbles from his tiny mouth, — an occupa-
tion in which he takes inconceivable pleasure; but yet his
orders are obeyed, and his gentle tyranny most readily
submitted to. Those little fists of his have never yet known
how to black another's eyes, nor to beat a woman, except
his mother; and yet his hand rules us, and we cannot escape
from him. Neither has that hand yet been shut upon gold
coin, nor has it carried a sceptre; nor has the round little
head, covered with the silkiest hair, or bald as the skull

14 THE BETTER SELF.

of a centenarian, worn a coronet or a crown, or black funnel-
shaped hat or bonnet, or a professor's black square mortar-
board, or the tiara of the chief of all bishops ; and yet the
, little head is loved and tended more devotedly than if
it held the imaginative brain of Shakspere, the wisdom of
Bacon, or the plotting intrigue of Machiavelli. We suppose
most babies have some hair on their heads, for Sir John
Falstaff is careful to tell us "that he was born about three
of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head."

All babies delight in " slobbering ;" toothless gums, eyes
without any meaning in them, pure and innocent as water,
unwrinkled skins — for folds of fat cannot be called wrinkles
— a pervading smell of violet powder, and a wet chin, —
these, as far as our memory serves us, are the indications
of babyhood.

But about that cradle what mysteries hang ! Those
tightly-clenched little hands may hereafter be the priestly
and sacrificial hands of Abel,, or the murderous fists of Cain;
for when we are impacted of such soft flesh and blood as
that there is no difference between saint and sinner. No, nor
is there any difference in rank. St. Giles and St. James,
Dives and Lazarus, look equally stately in the cradle — and
in the grave. The greatest epicure and the most starved
ascetic fare equally well upon mother's milk, and each sleeps
as softly in his mother's arms. And while they are so asleep,
listening from their mother's lap or from the rough cradle

THE VERY YOUNG CHILDREN. 15

to those mysterious noises which the poetic Irish call the
" whisperings of angels," the fool and the philosopher are
alike. That little head may, in after years, wear the scarlet
hood of a doctor ; it may be freighted with all the learning
of Vatel or PufTendorff, and give laws to nations. Wheaton
and Blackstone were babies once ("lawyers were babies
once, I suppose? said Charles Lamb, as if there was a doubt
about the matter), but when they were babies, they perhaps
only looked a little uglier than other babes.

A very young child, too, has this advantage over a man :
you can't tell whether he is a fool or not; whether he is a
down-right idiot, or deaf and dumb. The bib and tucker
cover all things ; like charity, they hide a multitude of faults;
and if in that smooth, round noddle poor baby has no more
brains than a billiard ball, a mother's love will believe that
it is the head of a Solon. For dumb children crow and
gurgle, and make inarticulate noises. Babies even conceal
deafness, because we hope that they are perfect in their
faculties. What a touching story is that of a lady of great
and high family, who was deaf and dumb herself, though the
wife of an earl through her beauty alone. In due course
the king o' the world, the baby, presented himself, — a fine
child, of course, a future earl, one born to wear a velvet cap
circled with gold, bearing aloft seven or nine pearls on
spikes, and ornamented with gold strawberry leaves between
these spikes ; a man who should hereafter be called cousin

16 THE BETTER SELF.

to the Queen, without any relationship or affinity, and should
be styled Right Honourable, although he had lost all claim
to honour. But with all his future honour he, too, might be
deaf and dumb. We take our fathers' and mothers' titles \
but we also inherit their forms, their minds, and their follies.
We have their fortunes and their lands, if they had any, and
also the sin that is born in the blood, — the canker-worm
that preys upon the brain. And so, as the nurse sat
watching over that babe, she saw the countess mother, mute
as she was, approach the cradle with a huge china vase,
lift it above the head of the sleeping child, and poise it to
dash it down. Petrified with horror, wondering at the
strange look of the mother's face, the nurse sat powerless
and still ; she dared not even cry out; she was not near
enough to throw herself between the victim and the blow.
The heavy mass was thrown down with a tremendous force
and crash — on the floor beside the cradle, and the babe
awoke terrified and screaming, clung to his delighted
mother ; and all the terrible antecedents were only prelimi-
nary to that tentative blow, which should tell the mother
whether her child had God's gift of voice and hearing, or
was like herself, a mute.

The equality of mankind which is found in full force
during babyhood, and which resumes its empire again in the
grave, does not, as we have hinted, last long. The babies
of the poor are perhaps as well off as any ; not perhaps a

THE VERY YOUNG CHILDREN. 17

workhouse brat, nor the infant of the starving tramp, but
those cottage-born infants, those children of the workers
whose daily labour produces enough for the wants of the
day — these are the happy ones. We are not all born, thank
God ! like Miss Kilmansegg : —

" She was one of those who, by Fortune's boon,
Are born, as they say, with a silver spoon

In her mouth, not a wooden ladle :
To *peak according to poets' wont,
Plutti* as sponsor stood at her font,
And Midas rock'd the cradle,"

And truly those who are the children of the rich have the
least happy childhood The Chinese, it is said, weep and
cry when a child is born, and rejoice when it dies, as if it
were to Ix; congratulated in getting this dreadful bother of
life over, and in having escaped the battle by being killed
just on entering it

Rich children must suffer for their rank even in the
cradle. There is some mysterious pleasure in playing in
the gutter, and in making mud-pies; but of that the rich
baby is ruthlessly deprived. Then, again, the children of
the wealthy are turned over to the nurses; and nurses
(patient, good creatures as some of them are) are not so
good as mamma ; for woman, splendid as she is in intellect,
and excelling in the warmth of her maternal affection, — for

c

18 THE BETTER SELF.

what man's love, we are asked, ever equalled a mother's ? * '
— will, upon the very least provocation, give over the most
precious privilege of a mother to any one else. Wet-nurses
suckle, and dry-nurses tend, the children of the great. The
blood of the Plantagenets is nourished with the milk that
rightfully belongs to the serf. Richard Cceur-de-Lion, King
of England, Lord of Aquitaine, soon grew fat upon " the
lacteal food, which artfully and chemically combines all the
most nutritious particles of nourishment," that was destined
by Nature to nourish Higg, the son of Snell, the Saxon
thrall. Now-a-days great ladies, princesses, and queens
advertise for wet-nurses ; and our future lords and masters
begin early in life to draw away the sustenance of the
people. They thrive upon such sustentation ; and at a
later period of life — say at six months or so — we are favoured
with photographs of the most noble mother nursing the babe,
and the highly serene father looking down complacently
upon the future hope of the country or the kingdom ; but
the picture is a photographic delusion, and a pictorial snare.
Of old, the mother of Moses gave up the child of the serf
to be nurtured by the daughter of a king. Now-a-days we
reverse the order, and the children of kings are nursed and
tended by the daughters of the people.

* We must confess that in the question there is considerable clap-
trap. The father's love is often surely as great, but of a different
degree.

THE VERY YOUNG CHILDREN. 19

But by this the great ones do not gain : the pains and
penalties fall upon the babies; and the babies or young
children of the very rich and the very poor have an ad-
vanced intelligence, and a worn look on their countenances,
that we do not see in the jolly faces of our middle-class
children who get their rights.

Mr. Catlin, the American traveller, in his curious book
called Shut your Mouth, maintains that the Indian babe is
much better off than that of any other nation. Our babies
(thanks to civilization) die so terribly fast : feather beds, bad
nursing, heated air, and sleeping with their mouths open and
their nostrils covered, he says, kill most Ten, fifteen, or
twenty a week are suffocated by sleeping with their parents in
London only. Seven hundred thousand, nearly one million
of children, are born every year throughout England ; and
of these one hundred thousand die before they reach the age
of one year. But with the rude American savages it is quite
another thing. Catlin looked at the burial-places, where the
skulls remain above the ground, and saw no babies' heads.
" None of our women die in childbirth," said the chief of
the Pawnee-Picts, " and none of our babies die in teething ;
we seldom lose a small child ; we have no medical attend-
ants." Bad spirits, rum, fire-water, pills, doctors, ground
wheat, instead of buffalo flesh and maize, and other
benefits (?) of civilization have done their work now upon
these tribes \ but it is still a fact that few children die, and

20 THE BETTER SELF.

that they are stronger and healthier than ours. Whisky and
rum are killing away the red men and women ; but the babe
of the savage, according to Mr. Catlin, has a very superior
time of it to ours.

Here let us put an important and true paradox by itself.
Thousands of babies in well-fed England, and in the houses
of the rich and well to do, are starved to death — by being
overfed.

Hence, no doubt, it is full time to admit women to a
medical education.

But whether in the palace or the wigwam, the baby
is king; the homunculus rules the world. Although he
comes after us, he is preferred before us; he shall sit in
our seats, he shall look down upon us, and stand in our
place of judgment. Strong as we are now, we shall be
but weak dust before his feet For the baby the world
exists and the heart of woman was created ; to him it opens
and expands and blossoms like the rose ; even as the even-
ing primrose shuts up itself before the strong morning or
noonday sun, but opens to the weaker light of the stars, so
woman yields her chief love, her watchfulness, her care,
herself, to babies. Between man and woman, even between
man and wife, there is but an incomplete freemasonry. Man
knows not all the pass-words to that heart, clever as he is ;
whereas the baby is the Master Mason, and by right of
birth passes at once through all degrees. What a bother

THE VERY YOUNG CHILDREN. 21

and a fuss women make about a babe who has only the
third of a chance of ever being a man ; for one-half of man-
kind die before five years are past, and half of the other half
before twenty years roll over their heads. But think you
not, or rather do you not know, that Mrs. Anne Hathaway-
Shakspere made a great deal more fuss over young Hamnet
Shakspere, who never lived to man's estate, and over Miss
Judith and her sister, than* ever she did over that most
supreme man who ever lived — that most gracious, generous,
loving, and humane heart — that head so regally endowed,
that heart so tender, so full of sad, deep thoughts, and yet
full strong, and manly, and true ? It is the man that we
should make a fuss about; we should crown the veteran,
not the raw recruit, with laurels. But for all we may say,
and all the world can do, homunculus is our rival, our con-
queror, and king : —

" Baby lips will laugh me down ; my latest rival breaks my rest ;
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast "

And it is right that it should be so. The infants in
Macbeth's vision had circlets of gold above their baby brows.
For them the future exists. For man, as soon as he is man,'
the trial will be quickly over ; the hill will have to be de-
scended ; the doors of this world will close on him ; and to
him the next world will open.

And to ensure his success and usefulness in this : his

22 THE BETTER SELF.

own happiness as well as that of others which depends on
him, to make him cultivate his better-self, it is of supreme
importance that he should not be spoiled in the cradle.
The mothers, when soft-hearted and soft-headed too, are
those who first ruin our very young children.

( 23 ;

in.

THE GIRLS AT HOME,

Of the selfish and hard-hearted essayists, the heroine of the
"Village on the Cliff" thus speaks. She first reads in a
weekly review the review of a novel, and next of a new piece
of poetry; and she then turns to an essay. "It was something
about women and about marrying ; about feebleness and in-
aptitude and missing their vocation ; about the just dislike of
the world for the persons who could not conduce to its amusement
or comfort Catherine pushed it away impatiently ; she did
not want to read in black and white what she knew so well
already — what she had always to read in the black and
white of day and of night — what, with unconscious philo-
sophy, she had tried so hard to ignore."

The fact is so often thrust under our noses, that we
suppose it useless to deny that of which there is so little
doubt, that the world is getting abominably selfish. If
any of the " clever " writers — whom some hold to be wrong,
mistaken, and to objurgate to order — were to write upon
sisters, they would do so in the style which Miss Thackeray

24 THE BETTER SELF.

so dislikes, but which so well tallies with the selfishness of
the age that it has become popular. To be a clever critic,
one, it seems, must be ill-natured ; and to be " true, so true
to Nature," as people have it, the writer must rehearse in an
article as much thorough selfishness as Rochefoucauld's
whole book contains.

Sisters, with these fine writers, would be regarded as a
" mistake ; " for they neither add to the riches nor to the
position of a family. Brindley, who thought that God
Almighty made rivers merely to feed "navigable canals/
the superfine writer in the Day who spoke of the choicest
flowers in their glorious pride as "almost as beautiful as
textile fabrics," and the selfish young husband who thought
his wife "the most expensive piece of furniture in his
house," might alone compete with those writers who would
lower the dignity of womanhood by some mean comparison,
in which all the beauty of sisterhood would be destroyed.
We should be told that kissing one's sister was like minced
veal, without flavour; that to take one's sister out was a
" bore ; " that sisters were generally in the way ; that they
impoverished an ancient house, and did not mend matters
in a new one ; and that the only consolation afforded by the
contemplation of them was, that unless you had sisters other
people would not have them, and that other people's sisters
were pleasant to look at, to dance and to flirt with, and that
when one's extremely selfish life was about half run, it would

THE GIRLS AT HOME. 25

be time to marry, so that one could secure a wife and a
nurse at the same time.

A great deal of this sort of stuff, of which it is hardly
worth while to stoop to say that it is as foolish as it is
false, is running over in our journals and magazines, and its
repetition makes it credited.

The stupid, pig-headed boy at a school is laughed at and
kept in order so long as a certain number of higher natures
restrain him ; but when he finds that his side increases in
numbers, he cries out boldly that the true policy is to shirk
the lessons and spend the cricket money upon tarts. Num-
bers believe in him, and stupidity and gluttony rule the day.
We may laugh as we like, now we are indulging in the
nobler occupations of reading novels of bigamy and police
reports, about the fine heroes and heroines of Sir Walter
Scott, and the bombastic fervour of Claude Melnotte; but
in the days when Scott wrote and Lord Lytton was a young
man, if a man had broached such sentiments in the club
as are now printed in fair type and on cream-laid paper, he
would have been scouted When Sir Philip Sidney wrote,
he dedicated his chief work tolas" dt3i lady and sister the
Countess of Pembroke," declaring that she " was most dear
and most worthy to be most dear," and that " her desire to
his heart was an absolute command;" and for a long, long
time in English home history this noble love of a brother to
a sister, of the strong to the weak, existed, and we hope it is

26 THE BETTER SELF.

not now entirely extinct We have not yet sunk into such
mere utilitarians that we can afford to pull up by the roots
all the flowers of life. And a sister's love is indeed one of
the precious things of life, and one, too, that will last beyond
this life. We shall have no woes in Heaven, it is certain;
but we shall all be brothers and sisters ; and to the truly
noble it is as Browning has it in the " Blot on the 'Scut-
cheon," the pure love that a brother bears to a sister must
exceed all other loves —

" For see, now only see ! there's no alloy
Of earth that creeps into the perfect'st gold
Of other loves — no gratitude to claim ;
You never gave her life — not even the dross
That keeps life — never tended her, instructed,
Enrich'd her ; so your love can claim no right
O'er hers, save pure love's claim."

But in an age when everything is tested just for what it will
fetch, and every gentleman is estimated according to the
weight of gold that he has about him — when there are no
honours given by the Court to virtue or nobility of mind,
and peerages are bestowed merely as a reward for political
services (and if we are to judge the present from the past,
say from the Greville papers, what are these services?),
perhaps we need not be surprised that this freedom from
earthliness is so little appreciated.

Truest beauty is oftentimes of the truest use, if not the
most apparent ; and any one who knows life well will speak

THE GIRLS AT HOME. 27

with due honour as to the utility of sisters. Even in the
houses of the very poor, where the battle of life is a mere
series of long struggles, and the constant demands of the
world harden the heart and deaden the feelings, the girls ot
the family are the most self-sacrificing and the best A
somewhat wide knowledge of the poor — a knowledge which
has opened and informed the heart that it has touched —
enables the writer to aver that he has hardly ever known a
struggling family which has not depended more upon the
goodness and the tenderness of the girls than of the boys. It
is the sisters of the house that keep life sweet It is the sister
who cares for poor father, or who preserves to the last the
memory of the mother. Well may the mother say, " A son
is a son till he gets him a wife ; a daughter's a daughter all
her life." It is the daughter who keeps everybody right, if
she can ; and who, when anybody goes wrong, shields him
with her ready excuses and her love, and who, when he goes
right, has recalled his better-self. And perhaps there is
not a more piteous sight in the world than to see a good and
pure woman proffer an excuse for the folly that she detests,
and for the sin that she abominates. How often has a pure
and good sister to sit at home and watch the downfall of a
bright, clever brother, led away merely from love of gaiety,
and brought, step by step, to the brink of ruin by the very
good nature and ease which has made him charming in his
sister's eyes !

28 THE BETTER SELF.

Nature, which, bound by the golden chains of God's
great laws, never errs, has implanted in the married pair
a desire for offspring, and for offspring of both sexes.
There are always more boys than girls born; and in
families where the males predominate, the longing for a
girl child is always great That the Hebrews praised God
when a man child was born is true enough, because the
tribe sought increase, and the male only carried the name ;
but in many families in England the birth of a girl causes
more rejoicing than that of a boy. And not without reason.
Families that are composed of boys only, grow up rude and
selfish, very hard, brusque, and unfeeling. The process of
education, which begins as soon as a child is bora, loses all
its tenderness, all its sweetness, when girls are wanting.
The extreme difference between the nature of children is
seen at once by parents; that, however, which exists
between girl and boy nature, can only be duly observed
by mothers who, having come from a family of girls, first
observe what a boy is in their own offspring. " I would not
have believed, sir," said one of these, " that I could have
been the mother of such a monster ! " The monster had
only been asserting his manliness (he was a fine boy of five
or six) in the usual way. He was greedy, gluttonous, apt
to quarrel, ready to strike, happy to kill and exterminate
smaller life, cruel, hardy, fearless unless surprised, cunning
and watchful after his own little games, as boys of that age

THE GIRLS AT HOME. 29

generally are. He was an unlicked cub, an unpolished
child of nature ; something like that happy young American
of whom Mr. Pogram spoke in his capital "oration." " He,"
said Pogram, of one of these rough ones, aged about
twenty, "is a true-born child of this free hemisphere !
verdant as the mountains of our country ; bright and flowin*
as our mineral licks; unspiled by withering convention-
alities, as air our wild and boundless Perearers. Rough
he may be, so air our barrs; wild he may be, so air our
bufFalers ; but he is a child o* Natur, and a child o' Free-
dom ; and his boastful answer to the tyrant and the despot
is that his bright home is in the settuV sun."

This speech, said to be transcript of American "oratings,"
exhibits the roughness and wild boastfulness of a boy nation,
before civilization has fully worked upon it Boys in our
own country would be just as ridiculous, only happily they
would be tamed down and laughed at But as civilization
and the knowledge of sister nations reform, purify, and
elevate a nation, so sisters in a family improve and elevate
the boys. How much we all owe to them we can hardly
say ; our debt is never acknowledged ; is this so because it
is so large that we know not how to calculate the amount ?

Brothers, in their turn, doubtlessly improve sisters ; and
indeed girls without brothers are too delicate and whim-
sical for the world. Yet the affection of sisters for each
other is as remarkable as it is beautiful, and the love of

3 o THE BETTER SELF.

women for each other — the parallel and antithesis to the
friendship of David and Jonathan — may be said to surpass
the love of man. When a very affectionate heart has no
true sister, it will frequently take up with a mere stranger,
and lavish all its love upon her. Thus the two ladies of
Llangollen, who carved the wood-work of their own house,
and made themselves remarkable for their friendship, were
simply friends who had bound themselves to a celibate
and sisterly life.

When there are many children in a family, and the first
one is a girl, and added to this, the family is somewhat
poor, the sacrifices which that eldest sister makes are
unknown. What she is called upon to do, how good she
is, how inexhaustible is the supply of love that she finds
in her sisterly-motherly heart, only those who have had
such an elder sister can imagine. How, day by day, the young
thing grows old and anxious-looking, from the many cares
thrust upon her ; how butcherly and bakerly troubles early
oppress her; how she gradually finds out the monetary
secrets of the family, and that father can't meet that little
bill; how she learns to excuse and put off, to coax the
tradesmen, and to put the best face on things to casual
callers and guests; how she patches clothes, and schemes
with the money : and in all this business, true to the flag of
the family, forgets all save its interests, fights for one
brother's apprenticeship, gets out the second sister as a

THE GIRLS AT HOME. 31

governess, and the third sister married, and gradually sinks
into a half-honoured old age without a thought for herself,
and only partly appreciated — those who have known such
good women will readily acknowledge. In the sacred story
there is one instance where much is forgiven, because the
love shown to the Saviour was much. It seems to us that
a great part of the glorious army of Martyrs will be made
up of those angels who, while they wore flesh about them,
were known as elder sisters.

The sister, moreover, is at once the support of the
father, mother, and brother. She honours the father more
than any one, and loves her mother with a deeper love even
than do her brothers; she is the chronicler of the family,
when it is in good circumstances, and believes in the
blood and culture which it possesses, and in all the fine
stories that Burke tells in his Peerage and Baronetage —
how Sir Lancelot Smith fought at the battle of Tewkesbury,
and another Smith struck the first blow at Flodden; how
Bobus Smith intrigued with Lord Holland, and another
Smith was chief commissariat officer in the Peninsula, and
was praised by Wellington himself. She will tell all about
William's college honours, and try to understand the
financial concerns that David, the second son, is studying
in the City, and the regimental stories which Herbert, the
third brother, writes home from India. She thoroughly
keeps the family together, and elevates it in the opinion

32 THE BETTER SELF.

of all by the honest and great thoughts which she has
about it.

Beyond all this, sisters in a family are a great gain.
They enable men to form some ideal of women who are
beyond suspicion, and who do not even " set their caps "
at every man and try to get married as quickly as they
possibly can.

A brother naturally believes in the goodness and the
purity of his sisters. Even in France, where " gallantry,"
as it is called, is an employment, a Frenchman believes
in the purity of two women, that of his mother and his
sister, although other people's mothers and sisters afford
him, as he thinks, only fair subjects for a gallant attack.
So when in England we remember that all women are often
represented as venal creatures, ready to entrap men, use-
less — at best only rather cumbrously ornamental — we may
look to our own sisters, and remember what they are and
have been. Very frequently such women save families from
ruin ; often arrest the decay of virtue — which eventually is
the decay of worldly prosperity — and almost always they
exhibit quietude, piety, peace, holiness, and religion to
us in the most beautiful phases. The old symbolists were
not far wrong when they made Truth, Faith, Charity, and
all other virtues in the female form. With sisters in a
family, faith is more frequently retained and religion more
sedulously cultivated than without them. The attacks on

THE GIRLS AT HOME.- 33

faith generally begin when a man has got away from home ;
and as young men are quick to change, and ready to receive
any new thing, we need not be astonished when we hear
of new " schools of thought " at college, nor of the students
of the Polytechnic being all free-thinkers. Such attempts
are, however, repulsed at home by the pure faith of the
women of the household ; and there are few more touching
or pathetic passages in English poetry than that in which
Tennyson counsels a student to spare attacks on his sister's
religion —

" Oh thou that after toil and storm

May seem to have reachtt a purer air
Whose Faith has centre everywhere,
Nor cares to fix itself to form,

" Leave thou thy sister when she prays,
Her early Heaven, her happy views —
Nor thou with shadow'd hint confuse
A life that leads melodious days."

And it is these melodious days that make life pure and
beautiful, like some deep strain of sacred music coming
from the earth, but gradually dying away amongst the
very air of Heaven itself. A conceited coxcomb, who
knows how to doubt, and is not noble enough to believe,
may try with shadowed doubt to disturb the faith of such
a one, but he will not succeed. Goodness in herself is
the personal basis of that faith : " Her faith through form
is pure as thine ; her hands are quicker unto good ; " and

D

34 THE BETTER SELF.

these, like the coats of Dorcas, shall be her witnesses. And
although the sister in well-to-do families be no bread earner,
and may be neither pretty enough nor clever enough to
add to the credit of the family, oftentimes her sweetness
and goodness call down blessings upon it, or, what is
much the same, carry the blessings with them. "Oh, my
Sophia," says the good-hearted and repentant Tom Jones,
when, like the prodigal, he returns from wallowing in the
troughs of the swine, " the purity of your sex can hardly
comprehend the grossness of ours." That's true. It will
be well if the lumbering conceit and grossness of some
of our sex will try to understand and reverence the purity
and goodness of their sisters.

( 35 ;

IV.
THE WIFE'S MOTHER.

In a sarcastic article on the Divorce Court, and upon
the continued increase of divorce cases in this country,
a smart essayist asserts that, in " the opinion of an expert,
drink and mothers-in-law are the chief agents in bringing
about that conditional state of conjugal affairs which is
apt to end in a decree nisi."

We do not, of course, know who the expert is ; but an
officer of the Court, one whose mind was filled with the sad
and immoral histories of cases there related, would no
doubt be well able to discriminate and to point out the chief
causes of domestic misery. With the strongest desire to be
very lenient to mothers-in-law — nay, with a belief founded
on some knowledge and experience, we are afraid that they
too often are such causes, though we can assert that, as a
rule, such ladies really desire to aid their sons and
daughters ; that they are frequently generous, self-sacrificing,
good, and loving; and that very few persons feel their
positions more acutely than the poor ladies themselves.

36 THE BETTER SELF.

And perhaps, as midges sting and gnats bite with a per-
sistence and a pain somewhat at variance with the size of
the tormentors, mothers-in-law have felt the petty stings of
sarcasm in the comic papers more acutely than graver
attacks. Whenever a dull fellow wishes to show his smart-
ness, he makes up a paragraph upon his wife's mother.
Even Douglas Jerrold, a professed wit, found that in
" Caudle's Curtain Lectures " he could not appeal to the
feelings of his readers more effectually than by pouring a
few columns of molten sarcasm on Mrs. Caudle's mother.
The poor women thus attacked must recall the French
maxim, Bel esprit \ mauvais cceur ; and this is generally or
too often the case — for, unless we put down some of these
attacks as a sorry kind of fun, we must confess that man
is, as a rule, an ungrateful animal.

Is it not the mother-in-law, before she assumes that
obnoxious title — excellent and charming lady then — who
encourages Edwin's affection for his Angelina? Is it not
she who first sees merit in an awkward, heavy-looking boy,
and persuades her husband that "they will make a fine
young couple " ? Who but her mother has made Angelina
what she is — has made her " sit straight," cured that stoop
in her shoulders, forced her to be able to execute Kuhe's
brilliant morceaux, or Beethoven's wonderful inspirations, or
to work up that thrilling sentimental song by Franz Abt,
which, in Edwin's own vulgar tongue, "regularly did for

THE WIFE'S MOTHER. yj

him, and cooked his goose " ? Is it not to his mother-in-
law that Edwin's Angelina owes what little she knows of
" MangnalFs Questions " and of cooking, of pies and poetry,
sewing and sermons, dancing and divinity ? Who " ran to
raise her when she fell, and kissed the place to make it
well," but mother-in-law? Who pointed out to her the
eligible and ineligible "party" to be married? Who re-
joiced in her triumphs, and grieved over her defeats, more
than the mother-in-law ? And who, as a rule, is a warmer
partisan of the son-in-law; Benedick, the married man? One
may very truly say of one's wife's mother that she is " a little
less than kin and more than kind " towards her daughter's
husband, and that no one experiences more ingratitude
than she.

This ingratitude is all the more poignantly felt because it
proceeds chiefly from the being whom she has favoured.
Like the eagle shot with an arrow winged with one of its
own feathers, she may be said to have impelled the weapon
which dealt the blow ; for, although in England much more
than in France and Germany young ladies choose for them-
selves, it cannot be denied that the bride's mother has much
to do, as aforesaid, in making the match. And proverbially
every mother thinks she has a prescriptive right to her
daughter. To her, rather than to her son, she looks for a
friend and a future home in her widowed and infirm years.
The mother takes more notice and exhibits more affection

38 THE BETTER SELF.

towards the son when unmarried; winks at foibles and
vices she would never dream of excusing in a daughter;
allows him more latitude than she would a husband, but
when he gets him a wife she does not desire to live with
him — she prefers her married daughter's home.

This is more true here than in France; for among many
of the good things that we might borrow from our lively
neighbours, to whom we fancy ourselves so much superior, is
a very constant love and respect shown to the mother by her
sons. Much of this may be romantic, but it is none the
less strong on that account There is one woman whom a
Frenchman will always respect — it is la bonne mere; one
whom he always holds pure and above suspicion — it is his
mother; one whom he always regards with a boyish love
and an almost childish affection — it is la petite mere. It is
to be confessed that he does not extend this feeling of
sacredness to his friends , wives, and that he believes it to be
his duty to be an unchained lion as regards paying unmis-
takable adoration to any fine Mademoiselle or charmante
Mees he may meet ; but his mother is always surrounded
with a halo of reverential love. He does not, however,
continue his adoration to one remove — he no more loves his
mother-in-law than does an Englishman.

A dislike so profound and so universal, extending, we
believe, to every people except the polygamous Turks and
Mormons, who cannot be expected at one and the same

THE WIFE'S MOTHER. 39

time to expend their stock of antipathy upon the mothers
of twenty different wives — antipathy being a very valuable
commodity if rightly used — must have some cause. It is
very ancient; there are traces of it in the classics; and,
looking over Plutarch's miscellaneous works, which we call
his " Morals," the other day, we found him quoting a story
to comfort a friend for a disappointment — by the way, of a
man who was always jolly ; a kind of Greek Mark Tapley.

He once, said Plutarch, "threw a stone at a she-dog, and
hit his mother-in-law ; whereupon he said, ' Not so bad ! ' "
So, says the moralist in effect, with a grim humour, " You
may hit something else very like what you aimed at, and it
will be not so bad for you ! " Why, in those days, when
there were no tea-caddies, when brandy-bottles did not exist,
and when no best seat by a sea-coal fire was reserved for
the " poor old lady," Plutarch should have told this wicked
story, one can hardly say.

Another complaint anent mothers-in-law may be that
fathers-in-law are exempt from the hatred that generally
accompanies the former and clings to them like the shirt
of Nessus. The reason is not far to seek. The father who
has got his daughter married congratulates himself that he
has settled her for life, and that he is rid of a somewhat
expensive burden. As, for the most part, she has seldom
been his companion, he cares little about her company. As
he is a conscientious man, and has been a good husband,

40 THE BETTER SELF.

he is content to believe that the husband his daughter has
chosen will be as good, and he troubles himself no further.

Few fathers have that intense and enduring affection for
their daughters that was exhibited by the great-hearted
Oliver Cromwell, who showed almost the care and tender-
ness of a mother towards his daughter, Lady Claypole.
There are few more touching, or more teaching, letters
extant than those of the tender-minded Oliver — stern
enough when his duty to his country or his God demanded
it — to this sweet lady, who returned his love with a peculiar
and pure devotion — which was shared, by the way, by his
wife and mother, and all the women who knew the Protector
intimately. It is a devotion which does him who excited
and those who felt it equal honour, and which should go far
to thrust aside the unworthy and unphilosophical prejudice
with which too many partisans regard the great man. But,
as we have said, the ordinary father is accustomed " to wash
his hands" of his married daughter as quickly as convenient.
He has to " look after the boys," and after the main branch
of the family. It is in the course of nature — nature as
moulded and taught by society — that the girls of a house
should be regarded rather as temporary allies of it than as
an integral part. They come and go, but men go on for
ever. The former leave their father and mother, and cleave
unto their husbands; and for the most part they do this
very thoroughly and willingly. Girls who marry enter at

THE WIFE'S MOTHER. 41

once into the familiar stories and feelings of the family of
their alliance — indeed, cross-grained cynics assert that they
will know more of the secrets of a house in a month than
a man who marries into a family will in a dozen years.
They take a pride in becoming one of the new people, and,
out of love for that to which they are allied, forget the blood
that they came of. By the son-in-law the father-in-law is
regarded as an ally and a friend, but never as an intruder.
He is looked upon as one who will help, rather than as one
who may demand help. He is never so troublesomely
intimate as the mother, and, as a rule, although much more
distant, shows a more genial and polite appreciation of his
daughter's husband.

But the mother, having been from the necessity of things
much more a companion of the daughter, does not take the
separation so calmly. It is a more serious matter to her.
Very frequently it must be a terrible wrench, a dislocation
of one of the purest and most beautiful friendships between
two persons that the world can witness ; and this must be
more especially felt in days of warm home-feelings. " He
who has to fill a pond," said Lord Bacon, in one of his
essays wherein acute thought is illustrated by homely sayings,
" can scarcely water the road ; " and we cannot scatter our
affections broadcast if we reserve so much of them for
home. A lady who has been harsh with her servants and
cantankerous and cynical with her neighbours, who has

42 THE BETTER SELF.

forgotten the poor, and ignored the public questions of the
day, will often be found to have centred her affections on
her daughter with an intensity which bears some ratio to its
narrowness. It may be very small in width, but it is deep
and strong. She will not "beteem the winds of heaven visit
her" daughter's "face too roughly." How then must she
look upon the behaviour of a husband whose ways are not
as her ways, and who may have been reared in a family with
notions entirely distinct from her own, if not antagonistic
to them ?' The sweet calm of a well-ordered home may be
succeeded by the careless negligence of one not accus-
tomed to order ; and women, naturally conservative, because
naturally more cautious and timid, rebel if "my daughter,
poor child," has not everything that she has been used to,
and are full of fears for the future and distrust for the
present. Moreover, either from a fbrgetfulness of the past,
or from that narrow view which grows at home and is not
corrected by going out into the world, "mother-in-law"
seldom gives her daughter credit for an absorbing love
which will make these odds all equals, which makes little
sacrifices very pleasant, and which turns the edge of even
serious troubles and greater trials. "Good gracious, my
dear, how can you wear that stuff gown ! " says one old lady :
" What, marry and give up at-homes and receptions ! " cries
another, little thinking that such gaieties were as little to be
regarded in comparison with an absorbing love as an extra

THE WIFE'S MOTHER. 43

stripe of paint on the cheek of a South-Sea Island belle,
or a second nose-ring in the cartilage of a South African
beauty.

In trying to account for what we hold a foolish prejudice
— for a wise young couple may generally make mother-in-law
a good friend and a close ally — we must not forget that there
are bad and injudicious old persons who deserve very much
what has been so widely said against the class, and who
render many a home the scene of the most irritating dis-
comfort The mother-in-law, say the ill-natured ones, has,
about the time that her daughters marry, got tired of her own
home and her husband, and is somewhat eager for a little
proper and exciting dissipation. She therefore takes upon
herself to visit Angelina and Edwin just as the two are
getting used to each other, and the stronger or at least
more forcible man is settling the new house into its future
scale of order, such as it may be. And after a while this
new relation, at first welcomed kindly and heartily as one
not at all unpleasant, brings a new mind, with new views,
taken from quite an opposite point of the compass to that
of dear Edwin. Her feelings are at right angles to his.
There may be — and who shall blame her, poor thing? — a
little jealousy if she finds her daughter forgetful of her
mother, and selfishly devoted to her husband; or, on the
other hand, Edwin may find that Angelina neglects him,
and attends to her mother with a warmth of affection not

44 THE BETTER SELF.

suited to his taste. The wife is perhaps to be pitied ; for,
if it be hard to serve two masters, how difficult must it be to
serve a master and a mistress at the same time ! Love is
tyrannical — nay, he is an exclusive despot. If a man loves
his wife with devotion, he will naturally claim the same
devQtion; and the third party — especially of such weight as
is the mother-in-law — becomes a terrible interloper.

But there comes a time at which this third party makes
herself felt in a manner which selfish man seldom forgets.
The baby-world is woman's province, and mother-in-law
rushes to the rescue of the daughter and to the control
of the house when baby comes. Into these mysteries it is
supposed that a man is not able to penetrate. He is as
much out of place as Clodius was when, dressed in woman's
apparel, he assisted at the worship of the Bona Dea. The
husband is put on one side as a useless person ; and even
the doctor, who may be supposed to have ideas twenty years
more modern than mother-in-law, is looked on coldly. An
elderly woman generally believes that the juniors of her own
sex have not the least idea how things should be done ; and
mother-in-law, with the best intentions in the world, is apt
to be tyrannical. When baby grows up, the collisions
between modem and ancient practice become more fre-
quent, and the presence of a third party in the house is
felt to be more irksome than ever. The wife naturally looks
up to the mother's riper experience, and the husband, if

THE WIFE'S MOTHER. 45

he meddles unwisely, finds that his mother-in-law is elevated
to the position of a judge — and not only a judge, but a
partisan into the bargain. Amongst many good qualities
which women have, that of being impartial is not one ; and
differences, small in themselves, become, when aggravated,
the fertile sources of quarrel. It is not pleasant for a
husband to have a court of appeal in his own house ; and,
while it may be very nice for the wife to have some one
with whom she can debate the faults of her partner for life,
it will be wise if she relies upon her own sense, and, as soon
as possible, cuts away the feeling of subordination which she
naturally owes to her mother. Very serious quarrels — and
quarrels are perhaps the most useless of troubles — could be
avoided by a little management

The mother-in-law is, we think, on the whole, much
more sinned against than sinning. Good-nature is mis-
construed into officiousness, tender affection and generosity
into wheedling and bribery, and the love of watching over
the happiness of a being she loves into a mean and spying
curiosity. She pleases neither master nor servants, and, in
her endeavours to help, often seriously offends the mistress
of the house. If she is wise she will rest content with
letting the young couple alone, and aiding her daughter at a
distance. The whole of the argument may be summed up
in the words of an old saying, so significant to husband and
wife — significant, but indicative of the selfishness of posses-

46 THE BETTER SELF,

sion — that "Two is company, and three is none." Husband
and wife desire each other's company and cosy chat alone :
mother-in-law is in the way with old or young couples ; and
it will require some considerable cultivation of the better
self always to welcome the Wife's Mother, in spite of the
miserable staleness of the jokes against her.

( 47 )

V.
OUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD.

Of all heartless modern sayings, many of them to be traced
to the foolish, inane, empty farces, and other mad and silly
comic literature of the day, of which we have so large a
superabundance, that which insults our relatives is the worst
"Relative" itself is a poor, weak noun, formed in an
illegitimate manner; for to be cousin and of the same stock,
generation, and blood with a man, be he a king or a com-
moner, is easily understood ; but to be merely related,
brought back to some connection with him, is but a thin
term.

Some of us seem apt to insult these " connections " with
the coldest of words, since we read of them such base libels,
which some wiseacre puts forward, as this — " Relations are
people who imagine they have a claim to insult you if poor,
and to rob you if rich " — a pleasant alternative surely. A
poor relation is something worse. " He is," says Lamb (to
some it may be necessary to remark that this good-hearted
and lovable essayist proved by his life that the article

48 THE BETTER SELF.

quoted was written in deep satire), " a piece of impertinent
correspondency — an odious approximation — a haunting con-
science — a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-
tide of your prosperity — an unwelcome remembrancer — a
perpetually recurring mortification — a drain on your purse —
a more intolerable dun on your pride — a drawback upon
success — a rebuke to your rising — a stain in your blood — a
blot on your 'scutcheon — a rent in your garment — a death's
head at your banquet — Agathocles's pot — a Mordecai in
your gate — a Lazarus at your door — a lion in your path —
a frog in your chamber — a fly in your ointment — a mote in
your eye — a triumph to your enemy — an apology to your
friends — the one thing not needful — the hail in harvest —
the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet"

Poor relations indeed must those be of whom one could
write and feel in earnest like this. Happily it is hard to
believe that any one does so. The great evils of any
" relation " are two ; one, that he is rich, and the other that
he is poor; but truly the gold sword cuts asunder more
than the ragged saw of poverty, and one can readily believe
that there are more quarrels with rich relations than with
poor ones. Poverty is a great trial, not only to those who
suffer, but to those who stand by and look on. When a
man is prosperous he very foolishly, but very naturally, takes
all the merit to himself, and he looks down upon his brother
in the dust with some contempt " If Jack," he says, " had

OUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD. 49

only made an effort — if he had only energy, what would he
not have done ! Now, just look at me." He forgets that the
lucky men are often lucky by accident, and that success
does not always crown and accompany industry. Moreover,
a want of due recognition and reward will beat down very
stout hearts ; and the long, long toiling and waiting crush
the hopes out of many good and bold men, who contentedly,
or at least quietly, give up the game, and let the tide of life
flow past them without trying to catch many fish. While
the rich man looks down, it may be, or his wife looks down,
upon the poor relation, the latter, on his part, feels ill at
ease in visiting his too rich brother. " I can't stand the
expensive dinners, the wine, and the servants," says the
poor wife, as she draws comparisons between her own
humble menage and menu and the more abundantly provided
house and table of her sister-in-law. Say what we may
about poor relations, in nine cases out of ten it is the pride
of the poor man that first takes hurt ; and it is the poor man
who wings his way from the rich one, and leaves him to
mourn, more frequently than we give him credit for, for
the loss of his relation. Cloth of gold will hardly match
with cloth of frieze. It is the old story over again. A great
wit, who is now dead, said of the divisions which pride
makes amongst us, that wholesale looks down on retail, and
that the man who sells a rasher of bacon is despised by the
dealer in whole hogs, although they are of the same trade.

E

50 . THE BETTER SELF.

Pride is, of course, the great agent of separation in all cases;
but one need not be unfair to the well-to-do and the suc-
cessful. In relationship, poor pride is quite as aggressive
as rich pride, and very often commences the action.

Still, the family is the great bond of unity. It is through
it that we advance to the fact that there is another and
larger family. It is in it that we must cultivate the better"
self. When we can feel that all flesh and blood are of one
family — a great, divine, and powerful family, but one which
has yet its skeleton cupboard — we shall have advanced
more than one step towards a better kind of civilization. It
is, perhaps, necessary for action, difference, and mental
employment, that the separation of small knots of men
should take place ; for if the simply selfish family idea were
acted upon by any great race — such as the Bourbon or
Napoleonic race, as especial examples — it might not be
quite so well for the rest of the world. The patriarchal
feeling, where a whole family looks up with reverence to one
head, enters largely into religion ; and, symbolically as well
as really, this reverence bids us call God, the Creator, our
Father, and regard mankind as our brothers and sisters.
This is the general and noble view of the family. That
more selfish and ambitious view entertained in policy and
trade, that of the Bourbons, Napoleons, and Rothschilds,
is more rare, and when found, either in the great world or
the little world, is a very great engine of success. Great

OUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD. 51

families, by a wise combination, have ruled the world, and,
without especial talents, have, by being selfishly true to them-
selves, remained firmly fixed in the world's estimation long
after the blessings of Providence and the gift of the genius
of administration have left them. They have illustrated the
wisdom of holding together, and the fable of the old man,
who, before he died, showed his sons a bundle of sticks,
and proved to them how strong numbers could be when
bound together, and how weak we all are when single.
And all through life we see this exhibited. Every now and
then there is a family that is true to itself. The uncles help
the nephews, the brothers stick together ; when one wants a
lift, a cousin is ready to give it. # Of course, it needs not any
great wisdom to predict the success of such a family. The
world may cry out upon it if it likes; but it is a deal stronger
than the world, and it makes its way through it It has the
elements of success in it — good-fellowship, calm wisdom,
mutual forbearance, knowledge of self; for all these are
required to make the sacrifices necessary to keep up the
family tie.

The success which attends such a family arrangement
carries with it the seeds of discord. Many can help one,
says the old proverb, but one cannot help many; yet he
can, and with a true family a kind of mutual benefit society
is established, in which one helps many, and many can help
one. Look at the clannishness of the Scots, and the way in

52 THE BETTER SELF.

which mere kinship is looked on as a sacred claim. Mark
their unity abroad, and its accompanying success. The basis
of such is simply the real, earnest, and honest feeling of
cousinship. So we may grant at once any amount of
material power to a family wise enough to be true to itself,
and to persist in keeping up family ties.

Amongst some people such bonds are much more pre-
valent than others. At the two extremes of civilization, the
very rude and the very polished people do not care much
for their relations. A brutal Bosjesman would just as soon
kill and hurt his third cousin as any one else in the tribe;
and that furious Negro Sultan, the King of Dahomey, who
illustrates the native sweetness of the Negro by slaying his
three hundred victims a year, so that he may float his canoe
in what Miss Wackford Squeers calls "human goar," pro-
bably slays a great many of his blood-relations. It does
not matter to him whether a wife's nephew or brother is
among the crowd. But these savages are better off than
the civilized savage in this — the tie of the tribe, which is,
after all, but another and larger name for the family, serves
his stead. After seeking to propitiate his vengeful and
hellish deity by this human slaughter, in which his subjects
participate and agree, the Dahomian Sultan marches his
Amazons against another tribe, and with much joy, revel, and
applause, slays them or catches them for the slave-dealers,
from whom, if indeed they would go quietly, they get the

OUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD. 53

only benefit in the life of such savages — an exportation into
Christianity and civilization of some sort. And each tribe
that fights another for the ultimate honour of cultivating the
white man's sugar and tobacco, fights under its family tie.
The honour of the tribe is felt in those dusky bosoms in
some way; so, as we proceed, this honour grows more
tender and sensitive, and under badges and cognizances
the simple family grows into the great house.

Amongst Celtic nations, and chiefly with the Irish
and Highland Scots (for the Lowlanders are of a very
different race), the claims of the family tie have remained
in full force; and a Scotsman will tell you what an
Englishman never can, namely, who is his cousin by a
sixth or seventh remove. Banded thus together, society
in Scotland and in Ireland naturally fell into a number of
circles. Chieftains and heads of septs, or families, came to
be the rule. There was the O'Connor Don, the O'Neil, the
O'Donoghue, the O'Sullivan, each the head of a family ; and
in the Highlands the same family rule produced the same
result Whether this was good as a whole we may doubt.
The poor fellow who was filius nullius, the son of nobody,
came in for nobody's share. But then there never was such
a person. Everybody was related to everybody else. The
Irish peasant who lived in contented idleness and poverty
upon the estate of his lordship, had the proud consciousness
of being some thirty-second cousin to the man whose dogs

54 THE BETTER SELF.

he fed with, and whose horses he ran after. You will see
this spirit — a loyal and beautiful spirit in its way — often
illustrated in the old Irish and Scotch songs. In the
" Groves of Blarney " we are told —

" There was Mars, and Vanus, and Nicodamus,
Sure with beauty none can wid them compare ;
There was Jul'yus Caesar and Nebuchad'nazar,
All standing mother-naked in the open air ! "

And these statues the poet evidently mistakes for some of
the family, for he adds, they were —

" All blood relations to my Lord Donoughmore."

At funerals and births, marriages and deaths, these family
ties came out strongly. Second sight and the banshee, a
certain kind of private prophecy and a private ghost,
belonged to the great family; but the poor man had his
share in them.

But these now live no longer in the faith of reason.
These opposing circles everywhere did little good to the
nation. The love which was abundant in the family was
cold and thin out of it " Blood was thicker than water/
said such people ; and all out of the family was regarded
as so much dirty ditch-water. So the circles or septs, like
separate globules of quicksilver which are separated by
dust, never ran together; and what made the strength of
the individual chieftain was the weakness of the nation.

OUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD, 55

Although there is much that is romantic in those old
times, when family love was strong, and family hate made
a perfect vendetta if any of the Joneses injured any of the
Smiths, when there was common cause in a family if any
one was injured, without too strictly inquiring into the
justice of the case, it became a necessity, as civilization
advanced, that ties of this sort should end. As nation
after nation emerged into the light of Christian civilization,
it found justice and charity — that is, universal affection —
far above individual fondness. Because Jones was the head
of our family, we had no call to wink at his sins, to put up
with his enormities, and to pour all our favours into the
pockets of Jones. Our duty was to be just to all men, and
to love Brown, who was a good man, but not our own, as
well as Jones, who was not a good man, but our own.
Gradually, as the dust fell off, these little globules of quick-
silver began to form a solid and compact mass, and to
merge into each other. The influence of universal learning,
of a religion which was as catholic as the sun which shone,
and the atmosphere which transmitted and diffused its light,
melted away the differences of man. It was found that not
only to one especial family had God spoken, but to all the
world — to the Jew first, and afterwards to the Gentile ; that
He was no respecter of persons, and that He lighteneth
every man that cometh into the world with a human heart
susceptible of human love.

56 THE BETTER SELF,

So the little families break up into one great family, and
the sept into universal brotherhood. We are all brothers
and sisters from Adam; and in the second Adam justice
supersedes favour. We cannot do more than is right ; and
if we are right and true to all men, all men will be our
brothers. If we only knew this properly, all wars, all evils,
all local miseries and want would be regarded as sore evils
in the family of man ; and all men who tried to draw others
together, and to make men better than they are, would be
regarded as the true heroes ; not those who thunder out
dissension, and who slay others. And yet the man of peace
is rarely honoured. Lawyers and soldiers make our peers,
and are clothed with the robe and the coronet. The truth
is, we are still far from the magic circle of the universal
family.

Therefore, until we enter that, we had better perhaps
cherish the relations we have. We can hardly extend love
to them without some bettering of ourselves. The critical
and sceptical spirit which has of late years been so preva-
lent, and which some people, generally very young men,
think so clever, has done much to separate us from family
ties, without making us love mankind a whit the better. We
are told in a hundred ways that country cousins are bores,
rude, uncultivated, and that uncles are only fit to be looked
to for the purpose of getting money from. Everywhere
there is a sad rude spirit of selfishness inculcated. Sisters

OUR OWN FLESH AND BLOOD. 57

are bores on the one hand, and mothers-in-law and aunts
objectionable " old parties," whom we are enjoined to be
rude to and get out of the way if poor, and to cajole and
get out of the way if rich. All this is as " snobbish " as
it is false, and as false as it is mean and despicable. God
only can know the patient, kindly goodness which relations,
especially female relations, show to us — how they amuse us
when babies, or when sick ; how they shield our faults and
magnify our virtues ; how they believe in us when no one
else does, watch the rising genius, cherish our first scrap
of poetry or wretched sketch, and stick to us at the last
when others desert us. Blood is, after all, in its best sense,
thicker than water, often sharing our hereditary idiosyn-
cracies. In good truth there are no people in the world
who can so fully and truly appreciate us, and who are,
on the whole, so true and generous to us, as our blood
relations.

58 THE BETTER SELF.

VI.

FEELING FOR OTHERS.

It is astonishing how much even the most selfish people
like others to feel for them, little as they may feel for others.
Mr. Greville tells us in his memoirs that George IV., than
whom "a more contemptible, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling
dog does not exist," yet was fond of being pitied, and
was never so much hurt as by some caricature of his wig
or his whiskers. Perhaps the wonder is that with the persons
around him he had any feeling at all. The way to make
a man know and despise mankind, is, they say, to make
him a Prime Minister. What must he feel, then, if a
King?

Happily there are so many millions of us without that
trial — but for king or beggar sympathy is equally needful
The word is hardly so homely as we should like, since a
Greek derivative poorly expresses an English word, because
to nine-tenths of our people it must be a mere sign, a
shibboleth which some thoroughly understand, and some
but lamely. For we, who have been accustomed to address

FEELING FOR OTHERS. 59

the old as well as the young, so well know the plain,
honest, sufficient, but by no means brilliant English intel-
lect, that, with all love and honour, we hold it to be but
affectation to use fine words, and words difficult of com-
prehension to the many, if we would be understood by
the many. Even so common a word may mislead and
confuse such of our readers as think that it means some-
thing better or more than our compound word "fellow-
feeling." And yet it implies nothing more than a feeling
together with another, a kind of Christian endeavour to
comprehend the trials, the temptations, the difficulties of
another— a kind of " put-yourself-in-his-place " attempt of a
good man towards his fellow-creatures.

In Shakspere we meet with manifold illustrations of this
all-embracing human bond — happy thoughts clothed in the
most lucid expression which that transcendent genius gave
us out of his abundant wealth. And his wealth was, after
all, what ? In what did his knowledge, his greatness, and
his goodness consist? What makes his wisdom? Why
should you and I, and the poor weak clerk in prison, who
has forged and fallen, and that stately preacher, who
upholds himself and many others, all choose to sit to Shaks-
pere's book ? Why should all bow to him, all intellects feel
below his ? Why was he thus great ? Because of his sym-
pathy. It was he who had that wondrous fellow-feeling that
made him paint a villain so that an angel might pity and

60 THE BETTER SELF.

even love him; and bade us pity and feel for the worm in
the bud, or the corporal sufferance of the poor beetle that
we tread upon.

Perhaps there is no power in the world which is not
wholly of the world that is so magical in its effects as
sympathy; and it is something which should call for our
especial study as regards our faith that that is based not only
upon a suggestion of this feeling, but upon its absolute and
unconditional demand. To be good Christians we must
love our fellow-man, we must feel with him, enter into his
trials — rejoice with them who rejoice, and weep with them
who weep. And He who showed the most abundant
fellow-feeling, who wept with the sisters that mourned a
brother, and felt even for the sinner and the outcast, puts
it to us plainly that a want of true sympathy is an absolute
negation of any power of true worship, or of any approach
to God. If a man loveth not his brother whom he hath
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? Look
down into the deep profound which these words reveal,
and mark thence how true godliness, the humble approach
of man to Heaven, depends upon our love for those on
earth.

Mark, too, how the noblest books and the divinest
prayers depend for their lasting powers : upon the sympathy
they show. Why do we so often turn in trouble and in
sorrow to the Psalms of David, and to the history of grief,

FEELING FOR OTHERS. 61

but that the heart yearns for sympathy, and finds its truest
expression therein ? Books may amuse, and may make us
laugh when we are well — may make us sneer pleasantly
at the ignorant and untaught, and think it exceedingly
vulgar in a young lady not to sit her horse well, or to be
able to talk about the Opera or the State concert; they
may tickle our vanity, please our mental palates, beguile
our thoughts, but they will live in our hearts only by their
sympathy.

Perhaps there never was a time when there was less
of this precious quality shown, and surely hardly any time
when it was more needed, than the present. Class is
arrayed against class by a long series of strikes, and the
consequences of these strikes have hardened the hearts of
the vast middle class against both the very rich and the
very poor. It is a trial of our faith, brought about by this
Social-Political science of which we are so proud It is
hard for any one of us who are struggling in life, as most
of us do struggle, to regard with a tender feeling men who
parade their rights, and by the power of trade combination
make each pound in our pockets worth only fifteen shillings.
That is an argument to the purse which we can all under-
stand And yet the working classes have a right to, nay,
a necessity for, combining, although, as we long ago pointed
out — nearly fifteen years ago in fact — such a right does
not and cannot really better their condition ; for it is

62 THE BETTER SELF.

simply ridiculous to suppose that the position of the
working classes is actually improved. They get more
shillings, but the shillings buy less. The currency has
depreciated ; the men are much as they were. Individual
men may and do rise, but so they did, and with infinitely
more alacrity, forty years ago.

It is precisely because of this difficulty that we should
sympathize with these blind endeavours after something
nobler and better. These aspirants are not all wrong;
they wish to struggle into purer air; they feel for their
wives and children ; they are men like ourselves, and
many of them better men than we are. Let us put our-
selves in their place ; were we there, we perhaps might
do as they. But, above all, do not let us harden them by
want of sympathy ; not for the dread of the threats of any
turbid demagogue, which are as empty as a soap bubble —
not for the sake of ourselves, were these threats likely to
be enforced — but for the dear sakes of these our brothers —
for the sake of our common God, the All-Father, as the
Scandinavians well called Him, who will not that we should
harden our hearts and break those of our brothers ; and
especially for the sake of our true faith. For it is by
sympathy as much as by anything in the world that we
shall make men believe in God. To form a parallel to our
Lord's words, If ye believe not in man whom ye have
seen, how can ye believe in God whom ye have not seen ?

FEELING FOR OTHERS. 63

God, in a worldly sense, is so far off, and man so near.
"In how many cases," says an excellent writer, "does
the belief in God depend, in its energy and reality, and to
some extent rightly, on the actions of men?" Do we
think of this in our daily hard-hearted doings, our buying
in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market? Go,
build churches, thou man of wealth, whose eagerness to get
that wealth has driven many a fellow-creature to despair.
Ten thousand sermons preached by eloquent divines will
not undo half the evil of the acted sermon of your life !

Think of this. Think and know — for you know that it
is true — that the minds of sufferers may be and are thrown
into despair, and into denial of all good, into doubt of
God, and into Atheism, by neglect. "Such," says the
writer we quote, thanking him for his good teaching in the
best way, by making it more public — " such states of mind
are natural because every sign of human love is a witness
to Divine love, and every want of human love a failure in
that witness. Every man who resists a genuine impulse
of pity makes himself to that extent a non-conductor of the
pity which God has put into his heart, and robs some one
else of a revelation, as well as himself of the blessing of
transmitting it There is no greater trial of faith than
human neglect and physical suffering together. Almost
any one who stifles a real impulse of genuine pity may be
making an Atheist, or clouding the faith of a Christian."

64 THE BETTER SELF.

These are weighty words, and none the less so because
it may be thought that they would hardly be needed in a
land which seems to overflow with pity, and where hospitals
and organized charities abound so fully. But it is not to
those that we apply the word "sympathy." Alas! of all
the thousands of patients that enter the splendid hospitals '
of London, are there ten who think of their pious founders,
or of the sympathy which, by a pen-stroke in a will, gave ten
thousand pounds to a charity, and left some angry heir so
much the poorer ? Such a deed, if it really arises from true
sympathy, is beautiful, and the donors may gather the
thanks in heaven that they miss on earth. But we speak of
living sympathy : a pennyworth of such true love is worth a
pound's worth of relief doled out at an hospital, to which
the recipients somehow think they have a right, and which
too often ministers to their bodies without touching their
hearts.

All of us demand sympathy ; and they who pretend to
want it not are foolish in their transparently hypocritical
cynicism. We desire it when we are young, we demand
the love and admiration of our fellows, we ask even from
our baby companions the ready ear and the readier laugh
when we are grieved or we triumph. The child— a stranger
in the world— looking up to its father as the oldest inliabi-
tant, and to those around it as accustomed to the world and
its ways, demands guidance, aid, help, love ; but, above all,

FEELING FOR OTHERS. 65

it asks of us to enter into its joys and its own little views of
men and things, and to understand what it means. The
true way of managing children is to feel with them, to know
their hearts and take their view. Unless we do so, our
hearts will remain strangers to theirs. And children are at
once tyrannical and sceptical with their elders ; they know
clearly who cares for them, who can enter into their feelings
about the dog and the cat and dolly, and the inhabitants
of that true Utopia, a child's world. " Oh, I say," cried a
philosopher of five to an elder philosopher of fifty, who
had been answering at random, " do get away — you know
nothing about it !" As for dogs and dumb animals, which
require sympathy almost as much as any of us, their instinct
that way is really marvellous.

A puppy which follows shambling after half-a-dozen
gutter children, and enjoys their play as much as they do,
will attach himself to the most sympathetic, and infallibly
pick out the best-natured child. The dog of one habitually
engaged will know when he is busy, and will find out the
most appropriate time to bring him his ball or his bundle
of rags to play with ; the sporting dog knows the temper of
the keeper ; and the dog of Mr. William Sikes studied with
a hidden sympathy the feelings of that atrocious scoundrel.
And in return animals understand and are grateful to our
human feeling for their troubles and diseases. All nature
has some hidden source of fellowship ; she, as Wordsworth

F

66 THE BETTER SELF.

says, " never did betray the heart that worshipped her ; " and
we feel this so strongly that we own that we are not disposed
to laugh at that quaint suggestion of Father Noyes and his
fellow-worshippers in America, that the very apple-trees in
the orchards know when they are tended and praised and
cared for. Many an " old Adam-gardener " in the country
will tell us how his flowers, nursed and tended by his hand,
will seem, at least to him, to lift their heads and blow
abundantly and gratefully towards him who knows their
habits, and has sought to understand something of their
hidden source of life.

But these are extreme instances. Of this we are sure,
that sentient nature demands all sympathy. And it is
essentially necessary at home. There, at least, is an unusual
demand for it. The father or mother who withholds it
from children' is short-sighted and unwise. Foolish and
evanescent their griefs may be, but they are not less real.
Rather are they the more poignant, since in this life the vain
shows of things dominate over the realities. Hence the
more reason that a ready sympathy should explain them,
and that we who are accustomed to life should lift the veil
and strip the mask from the idol which terrifies the child.
Enter into your son's feelings, and speak peace to your
daughter's heart. Be something more than the head of your
family and a severe judge. There is no revolution but that
within your own heart that will lay low the despotism of a

FEELING FOR OTHERS. 67

parent and make it into the limited monarchy of a father
and a friend. Nor, as the child grows up, will it need less
wise counsel and true sympathy. Half the quarrels between
husband and wife, no less than between father and son,
mother and daughter, arise from the withholding of this
precious peace-maker, this wise counsellor, which springs
from a gentle and an understanding heart. " He did not
feel with me — he did not understand me. He never tried
to put himself in my place." How often are these words
uttered sadly and bitterly ! Nor, as we go on in life, do we
need sympathy less. We must seek for love and apprecia-
tion in our brothers' hearts. If they seek not to understand
us, how shall nobler and more distant beings do so ? In the
struggle of life, the hero and the coward, the conqueror and
the conquered, need sympathy equally. Let the wife espe-
cially erect herself above the mere plaything of a youthful
affection, demanding continual courtship, and with interest
enter into her husband's pursuits, and sympathize with his
many trials, which no man is free from. It is in the struggle
of life, which frets and worries, insensibly wearing away our
better feelings — in the disappointments of legitimate aims, in
the gathering weakness of resolve and hope and faith which
years bring with them, in the daily obliteration of some noble
resolve — that man's trials lie. The best of us often doubts,
and no doubt often hates himself, gives way to despondency,
and becomes a prey to melancholy. The strongest of us

68 THE BETTER SELF.

needs some support, some good word in season which shall
cheer us on the way, and the wise woman will be ready to
give as well as to receive sympathy. There are wives, un-
fortunately, who put down every trouble to a man's own"
fault, and to whose stony bosoms one might as well apply
for sympathy as for warmth to an iceberg. And let us
remember that perhaps there is no one who needs it more
than the upright, good man, who walks on the straight path,
every now and then parting from friends whom he loves,
and who knows as only he can know how much the struggle
has cost, and what secret wounds are dealt him in the battle
of life. Often the mind that upholds others needs itself
to be upheld ; the wise adviser himself needs advice ; the
honest heart that seems so true and bold is fainting from
some secret sorrow, dying from some little wound which
sympathy could stanch. Withhold not such fellow-feeling ;
for in giving it you at least carry out the behests of that
newest human faith, "the religion of humanity," and in
giving it you may be advancing a step farther even into the
confines of the religion of God.

( 69 ;

VII.
FRIENDS AND NO FRIENDS.

But we should be careful from whom we seek sympathy if
we cultivate the better-self.

It would, perhaps, be considered cynical to say that not
one man in a hundred is calculated to be a friend, and that
not one in a thousand is now-a-days educated for that im-
portant, noble, and ennobling office ; but nevertheless it is
true. The public, which is represented as not liking the
truth, and which before now has broken the windows of
those who told it unpleasant truths, still affects to believe in
friends and friendships, but all the while is hugging itself
with self-help, and caring little about helping others out-
side of self. " Make your own little game ! " it cries. " Let
coal-merchants combine, for the sake of making money a
little faster, and starve a few hundreds of the poor ; let the
nation pull down the Church that has ennobled and raised
it, that has built schools throughout the kingdom, and given
the poor what education they have — kick it out and forget

70 THE BETTER SELF.

its services — have a scramble — one may get a ' big lump.'
Never reward merit — it is troublesome to do so ; raise your
rich tradesmen and city aldermen to dignities, and let their
sons reign over your sons, so as to make the very title of
knight contemptible ; regard a man only because of his
money qualifications, and the nice ' place ' he has in the
country; make money your chief god; do not help a friend
when he is poor — drop him ; know a man when he is rich,
and flatter him ; do not invite your relations to your feasts,
but only those from whom you expect something; make
every one you know of some use to you."

Such is the new (or old) patent social utilitarianism, the
bastard product of the greatest-happiness-of-the-greatest-
number principle. To a reflective man the phrase condemns
itself. A very little worldly knowledge will tell us that the
greatest number are savages. Certainly the only persons
who ought to rule — Christians, because they are bound to,
and really do in a measure, consult the happiness of others
— are in a woeful minority. But, even in this country, if the
bookish philosophers confine us to it, fools are in the
majority ; the Secular Society and the Sunday Distinction
Society, and Mr. Dodger and the Deliberation Society,
would concede this. Are we then to place the happiness
of the whole in the hands of fools — or are fools the fit
governors for wise men ? What about lunatics and eccen-
tric persons ? How is the majority to be made up, and how

FRIENDS AND NO FRIENDS. 71

is happiness to be defined ? Who has decided what it is ?
Bentham, whose portrait has as comical a screw on its
mouth as that of Rabelais himself, must have heartily enjoyed
the intensely roguish humour of proposing this miserable
Will-o'-the-Wisp to lead the crowd into the mire. A school-
boy's paper-chase is a gloriously intellectual pursuit com-
pared to such a harem-scarem piece of humbug. How can
we expect to find true friendship amongst the utilitarians ?
For a friend is a costly product, and requires a good
expenditure of feeling. Hence the satirically candid parson
who told his congregation that he could fill his church three
times over with his acquaintances, but that the pulpit would
suffice to contain all his friends, was not far wrong. Eng-
land, hastening forward on her selfish patent principles,
guided by the philosophy of one who confesses that he was
at twenty-one a mere "book in breeches," must prepare
herself for a fatal Ramoth-Gilead, unless she suffers her heart
and her conscience to speak out.

But, as in extreme northern climates, where there is but
little sun, or rather, where the slanting rays touch without
warming and have little power, there is found a parhelion,
or mock sun, which at times enrages the frozen traveller
with its mere show of warmth and light, so the country
which produces very few friends produces an abundant crop
of false and foolish people, who, to ingratiate themselves
with the public or with private persons, pretend to an

72 THE BETTER SELF.

immense fervour, warmth, and magnanimity, and hope
thereby to advance their own fortunes. Such persons are
like the travelling showman, spoken of in Dickens's story,
who keeps whispering to poor little Nell, "Codlin's the
friend, not Short," and take care to advertise their own
merits in opposition to those of their rivals. There is not
a movement at the present day upon which these foolish
and false friends have not mounted to advertise themselves.
There is not a holy cause that they have not bedaubed and
contaminated — not a sacred statue upon which they have
not stuck their names. Pupkins, the people's poet ; Pup-
kins, the champion of the masses; Pupkins, the working
man's defence ; Pupkins, promoter of the national society
for providing old Tom and new scandal to distressed washer-
women. Do not our readers know Pupkins ? Do not they
know many of his sort ? Do they not also know Slodgers,
the people's champion, who convenes a meeting in Hyde
Park for the " crushed crossing-sweepers," and gets reported
in the newspapers for gallantly defying a policeman who is
doing his duty, and calling him a " minion of the law " ?
Does any one believe that the crushed crossing-sweepers —
whom, as Mr. Slodgers said, " a tyrant haristocracy kep' a
waitin' on Providence at filthy crossin's, rather than defile
their patent-leather boots with the mud of a free city " —
ever benefited by their champion's conduct ? Rather, is it
not well known that the boys of London seized the vacant

FRIENDS AND NO FRIENDS. 73

crossings and the golden opportunity, and pocketed the
pennies of the crushed crossing-sweepers ?

Slodgers and Pupkins become, by puffing, public
characters ; their names have figured on every hoarding, and,
false and foolish and inefficient friends as they are, they reap
the reward of such advertising. The name of Pupkins is
known — that of Slodgers is, if not honoured, notorious.
Small consolation is afforded in the belief that these hurtful
blunderheads must at some time or other reap the reward
of those who meddle and muddle — must at length " land "
themselves in the ditch of blind guides, and be fed on the
disappointment they have occasioned their dupes. Accom-
panying them, let us trust, will be the Coryphaei of the
Woman's movements — the crowd of ladies and gentlemen
who have rubbed all the bloom of innocence from woman-
hood by open and unseemly debate of sexual questions —
— the persons who, for the sake of spurious popularity, have
equally maligned man and woman, and who have planted a
wound and opened a sore in social life which will bear
bitter results in the next twenty years. Well may woman
cry, " Save me from my friends 1 " Well may she be
ashamed of those who have led her to the very market-place
to be exposed and contemned ! Has woman or man gained
anything from these foolish friends except spilt ink and
heartburnings ?

Real friends of the public are not born every day, and

74 THE BETTER SELF.

do not advertise themselves on walls, or noisily proclaim
that they are proper candidates for the School Board.
There are others who have been at once more judicious and
more silent.

" Not only we, the latest seed of Time,
'New men that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the Past — not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well " —

but others whose names are unrecorded on earth, but whose
labours will not be forgotten in heaven. As a rule, when
we find men who often make use of a popular cry to mount
into notice, and whose names are associated with that which
ultimately benefits themselves only, we may legitimately
question their motives. We would not only denounce
Slodgers and Pupkins as hypocrites, but as useless, and
worse than useless. No one injures a good cause more
than a foolish friend. We have a right to weigh such self-
constituted friends, notwithstanding their ingenious method
of self-laudation and self-advertisement

Of private friendship enough almost has been written,
were it not judicious as well as useful to furbish up and
bring forward old truths. Every young man should, if
possible, in early life secure a friend somewhat older and at
all events wiser than and of a different character from him-
self. He should be older, because his experience will be
able to correct the hasty judgments of youth ; wiser, because

FRIENDS AND NO FRIENDS. 75

it is always well to associate with superiors, not inferiors, in
intellect ; of a different character, cooler and more stable,
or, it may be, warmer and more enthusiastic, because thereby
we see things from a different stand-point.

A good friend is an almost universal want ; and the
value of such has been so long acknowledged that Cicero,
who is at any rate a good school-authority on the subject,
says that friendship is the only thing upon the usefulness
of which all the world is agreed. The chosen friend
must of course be a good man and a generous one ; such
only can be a lasting friend. He must be a man of
honour; because, if by any means the friendship should
cease — and it can only cease by mutual faults — he will
not turn into an adversary. The selfish old proverb, that
we should treat our friends as if they might at any
moment become enemies, is rather to be spoken of tem-
porary allies than of real friends ; but it is true from this
point, that we should always act with courtesy, repress and
conceal our weaknesses, and stamp out our selfishness in
the presence of friends. Remember, also, that in friend-
ship, as in most matters of this world, it is better to give
than to receive ; it is finer to do a noble action than to be
its recipient or the cause of its illustration. At the same
time we must take as well as give : that is one half of
friendship. Addison has perhaps afforded the best defini-
nition of friendship, in telling us that it is " a strong and

76 THE BETTER SELF.

habitual inclination of two persons to promote the good and
happiness of each other."

The ban mot of the French, that " friendship is love with-
out wings," is one of those pretty sayings which explain why
the oft-mooted question, Can there be a true friendship
between man and woman ? must be answered in the negative.

The question is more complex than it seems. The man
and woman should be of about the same age, or else friend-
ship deteriorates into patronage ; they must be young, since
in old age, or even in middle age, enthusiasm is so blunted,
and the judgment has become so critical, that all warmth
and generosity will have simmered down into mere calcula-
tion. These being conceded, the friendship, if between
single persons, will ascend to love, and culminate in marriage;
or, if between a married and a single person, or between
two married persons, is apt to become very suspected, and
the man will degenerate into the " foolish friend," since his
advocacy will assuredly do more harm than good. To
assert that women, the greater number of whom are most
generous and self-denying, cannot feel a warm, enthusiastic
friendship for a man without any approach to love — to
insinuate that they have an ulterior motive of a selfish
nature either known to them or but partially concealed —
is to be guilty of that which is at once mean and false.
But, bearing in mind that friends must be always together,
or very frequently so — that they must aid each other in

FRIENDS AND NO FRIENDS. 77

critical moments, and lay bare to each other the secrets of
their hearts — and that friendship must always be active and
not passive, the difficulty of what are called Platonic friend-
ships will at once be seen. If a gentleman finds a young
lady willing to treat with him upon that footing, he must be
first assured that she does not intend to marry, and he him-
self must be a celibate. It is the unhappy (or happy ?)
condition of the sexes that friendship between them must
precede love, and that the world will always attribute to the
warmer attraction between the two those flattering prefer-
ences which equally mark friendship and love. Let either
of them be properly defined, and the extreme rarity, if not
the impossibility, of Platonic friendships will at once be
conceded.

Hence, also, in this deteriorated age of ours, arises the
difficulty of friendship between two persons ill-matched
as to degree in rank, or social position and riches. Thus a
duke might possibly entertain the highest respect for and
admiration of a literary but poor toiler for his daily bread,
but they could hardly meet in the same club, or pursue
their avocations together. A parson might delight in, the
patriarchal simplicity of his aged clerk, but it would hardly
do for him — although parsons are privileged to know and be
friendly with all sorts and conditions of men — to habitually
take tea with him, and to enjoy the innocent chat of his
pretty daughters. In both these cases the higher and the

78 THE BETTER SELF.

lower friend would cease to be what they should be, and
fall into the ranks of fool-friends. The duke would be
voted a " cad," the poor author designated a flatterer and a
parasite; the parson would not benefit the clerk, and the
spinsters of the village would annihilate the character of the
parson and the clerk's daughters. The little schoolboy who
wrapped a fine butterfly in a flannel petticoat to keep it
warm had friendly intentions no doubt, but in the morning
he found that he had crushed his pretty prisoner.

We say nothing about the friendships of women ; they
deserve a separate chapter to themselves, if only because of
their extreme rarity. Every girl, with her longing, loving
heart, looks out for a girl-friend. She is her first love, her
purest, her ideal, her best ; but she seldom meets with one
of the right sort ; and every woman of thirty, maid or matron,
looks back upon such friendships as having been enticing,
promising, but as empty as the cases of the cracker bons-bons
after a party ; she looks back with a sigh as she thinks how
shadowy her friendships were — almost as shadowy as that of
Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris.

Another kind of foolish friends are those who, having no
judgment, degenerate into flatterers. It would be both a
long and a sad history to record — if, indeed, it could be
recorded — how nations have been destroyed and how people
have perished by injudicious advisers, who have made them
first drunk with a false glory, and then hurried them to

FRIENDS AND NO FRIENDS. 79

destruction. We have a pregnant example every day before
us in the present state of France, and indeed of Spain.
The Nemesis of nations comes as assuredly to them as it
does to men. Of how much wickedness have the foolish
trends of Ireland been guilty? How many wild-goose
chases has she been led into? How often has she been
assured that the shadow in the water was a thousand times
better than the substantial bone that she has and holds ?

The foolish friend of a man generally tells him a heap of
flattering untruths, either for his own immediate benefit or
from lack of judgment Sometimes it is the foolish father,
who, by indulgence and a false pride in his son, persuades
him that he is a genius ; sometimes it is the mother, who by
self-sacrificing industry, makes the daughter lazy for life;
more frequently it is the stupid acquaintance, who pretends
that he has seen the world, and adds, with a bold careless-
ness of experience and the truth, that "fast life is very
jolly," and that it is quite possible "for a fellow with his eyes
open " to touch pitch without being defiled, or to put one's
hand in the fire without being burnt. Experience has the
credit of making — by a supernatural power, we should think
— fools wise ; it certainly makes them poor and sore. The
fox who had cut off his tail, could not persuade his com-
panions that it was convenient and the right thing to do;
but our human tail-less foxes have plenty of dupes, who, in
after life, and in a base and ridiculous state, lament their

80 THE BETTER SELF.

too-trustful belief in the assertions of foolish friends. One
or two such will be sure to destroy all but the heartiest
endeavour to live the life which it is high time to think
of us all doing. Happily, one readily tires of such jays.
Hamlet wearies of his interview with the fop Osric, though
it lasts but five minutes.

( 8i )

VIII.
ADVICE GRATIS,

Closely allied to our foolish friends are those intimate
acquaintances who in one's way in life proffer advice, and
howsoever humble and retiring we may be — perhaps, indeed,
our humility enhances the chances of our meeting with
such — offer us not their aid but their experience.

It is a difficult thing for a young man, who sees matters
from a very different stand-point, not to quarrel with these
good-natured and too candid friends ; for these advisers
sometimes hit our faults pretty shrewdly, and have quite a
genius for treading upon our family, hereditary, and tender-
est corn. But he had better restrain himself. Hamlet says
some hard things to Polonius, but they do not hurt the
garrulous maxim-monger, and certainly do not heighten the
character of Hamlet

Everybody imagines that he is capable of giving " no
end," as he would say, of good advice. He firmly believes
in being, if not a wise man himself, a wise man for the sake
of others. He is like the famous Lord Chancellor who, in

G

82 THE BETTER SELF.

his own legal affairs, made plenty of mistakes, but who never
gave a wrong judgment, and whose only way of securing
wisdom for himself from himself was to pay into one hand a
fee, which forthwith pocketed it. Then he was sure to be
right — he had taken advice. So our general adviser will admit
mistakes in his own actions, but, in the matter of advice,
he is " as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina."

This sort of belief, inherent in man, and of course in
woman, breaks out early. We have our boy-advisers and
our girl-advisers at school, our infant Samuels, who are early
wise, and young Deborahs, who will sit and judge Israel.
The simplicity of Christian folk who misread the text of
wisdom proceeding from the " mouths of babes and suck-
lings," not as prophetic of a new dispensation, but as real
and actual, gives some credence to this early claim of the
young ; and in religious families we find small boys ready
to expound texts full of insuperable difficulties, and appren-
tices and young clerks, confessedly failures in their own
" line of business," as they would phrase it, ready to enter
the Church and to undertake a cure of souls. This reminds
one of a discontented coachman who complained of his
team, " They all want to go different ways-— one pulls one
way, one another; no one consults me. No, I've had
enough of it ; I want some easy work now — a good sinecure.
I should just do for a Prime Minister ! " And it is really to
be noted, as amongst instances of ignorance much to be

ADVICE GRATIS. 83

deplored, that the lower orders believe that men high in
office do not work, that a Prime Minister's place is a sine-
cure, and that he always finds some one else to work for him.
That ministers of the Crown play and " sport away " the gold
that the people pay in taxes is a vulgar tradition older than
Cowper, who made use of the prejudice. How hard Palmer-
ston worked even in sickness, the jauntiest and least jaded
of all, may be seen in Dr. Granville's interesting memoirs.

The amount of advice which Finance Ministers receive is
something astounding. There is not an article on the earth
or under the earth, in the waters or above them, but is
brought forward as taxable. It was no doubt some officious
fool that suggested to the Roman emperor that celebrated
tax which has left behind it a memorable epigram on the
sweetness of money; it was another of the same sort who
doubtless made Pitt tax the very light of heaven, and endow
England for many years with ugly houses and badly venti-
lated dwellings ; and perhaps, if ever we know the secret
history of the present time, we shall find that Mr. Lowe's
match-tax was a happy thought of some wiseacre, although
the classical and punning motto may have been the late
Chancellor's own. We must not credit such volunteer ad-
visers with all the errors of the Government ; on the con-
trary, there is much that we owe to them in Army, Navy,
Church, and State ; and it is one proof of the happy consti-
tution of England that almost every tax-payer is one who is

84 THE BETTER SELF.

an ardent politician, and who spends many of his waking
thoughts- in endeavouring to discover how he can put a bur-
den off the shoulders of his own class, and quietly adjust it
on those of another.

In private life advisers are as thick as leaves in a wood,
or as flies in a grocer's shop. A man may be too mean for
any employment except listening to advice ; he may be too
poor for a bribe ; but he is not too poor to receive a good
round lump of advice upon any occasion. Amongst the
many evils from which the poor man suffers, we do not per-
haps reckon that of the multitude of advisers who darke n
counsel by words without wisdom, or take into account its
vast importance ; for a man who gives another advice is
either a leader or a mis-leader — blessed if the first, accursed
if the last. Every lady with five hundred pounds a year of
her own can tell the poor sempstress who earns her fifteen
shillings a week how to spend and scrape and save much
better than that poor victim of experience herself. The
gentleman with his fifteen thousand a year knows how to
teach Hodge with his pound a week and six children the
way to bring up a family in honesty and sobriety, in the fear
of God, and out of the workhouse. The squire means well,
but he cannot know what Hodge knows ; and the working-
classes are irritated beyond endurance by vexatious sug-
gestions which can do no good, and too often betoken a
miserable thoughtlessness. There are two or three instances

ADVICE GRATIS. 85

of this good advice turning to bitterest poison which have
become historical. It was said in a tone of genuine pity,
by a lady of the Court in the reign of Louis XVI., when the
mob of Paris was clamouring for bread, " Poor creatures !
No bread to eat ! Then let them eat cakes ! " The last
sentence was meant as a benevolent suggestion, and was not
more thoughtlessly stupid than a noble Duke's letter to the
papers, recommending in the Irish famine, when the poor
bodies of the " finest peasantry in the world " wanted much
filling with bread and meat, a pinch of curry in warm water
as a soothing and nourishing soup.

The general adviser, with his little hoard of cut-and-
dried maxims, meets us at every turn of life. Let us suppose
that we are about to fulfil what Mr. Ruskin thinks one of
the ends of life, and build a house, well planned and com-
fortable, suited to our modest requirements. Straightway
we are taken in hand by the " learned Kett," who lays down,
as three irrefragable rules — (1) that a man should never
build after he is forty-five years of age — which is just about
the time that man, who is a building animal, desires to build,
and has earned money to do so ; (2) that he should not lay
a stone unless he has five years , clear income in hand ; (3)
that he should always expect that the cost will be twice, if
not three times, the amount of the estimate. No doubt he
who bears this advice in mind will not be disappointed, but,
if all were to do so, building would nearly cease. Why

86 THE BETTER SELF.

should a builder's estimate be so uniformly insufficient?
What should we say of a tailor or a butcher who contracted
to supply us with clothes or meat at a certain price, and
then demanded double his first charge ? But this is not the
only advice the ambitious builder of a house meets with.
Architects by the score encounter him on every side; in the
matters of drainage and ventilation he cannot stir a step ;
certain parties insist upon telling him all about his dust-bins;
and, lastly, to dwarf or stamp out all originality, there is a
general shout that, " Fools build houses and wise men live
in them."

In the matter of taking a wife — a far more important
step than that of building a house — one's good advisers
would be as plentiful as blackberries were an opportunity
given. But the other sex perhaps suffers more than we men
in that matter. It is just the one thing upon which almost
every man enters with a cruel doubt, but upon which he is
supposed to have made up his mind. At any rate, the best
way to make up a lover's mind upon that point is to oppose
him ; then, and then alone, he is sure of being right But
his friends for the major part are sure that he is wrong.
How many brides and bridegrooms have been married this
year whose friends have not had serious doubts as to fitness,
compatibility of temper, agreement of habits, of thought, or
of religion ? As for the bride herself, the probability is that
she has been so lectured and bored by advisers and good-

ADVICE GRATIS. Zj

natured friends that she enters upon her wedding duties in a
sea of doubt, and with a dim notion that she is making a
muddle of it. And for both man and wife, nay, for single
as well as married, there remains that sweet bit of consoli-
dated wisdom, that very essence of bitter advice, which was
given by a sage some years before the Deluge, and has sur-
vived in some Shemitic record every other scrap of antedi-
luvian wisdom. " Shall I marry or not marry? " asked a not
very ardent youth of the sage. The ancient took three
weeks to consider, and at the end of that time delivered
himself of these oracular words, " Whether you marry or do
not marry, you are sure to repent" We are sorry to add
that several other sages have laid claim to having originated
this icy bit of comfort, the coldness of which is only equalled
by its utter uselessness.

It is a very difficult matter to give advice well ; so much
so, indeed, that the best adviser is he who really knows little
or nothing of the parties for whom he arbitrates, or to whom
he gives advice. He must merely consider them as ab-
stractions, and throw aside all other considerations save the
justness and fitness of the case. Above all, advice should
seldom be volunteered ; it is one of the things of which we
can do with a little, and that we must desire, as Sairey
Gamp said of the bottle of gin to which she so often applied,
" Don't arst me whether I will or whether I won't have none,
but put the bottle on the chimbley-place, and let me put my

88 THE BETTER SELF.

lips to it when I am so dispoged." Advice is all very well
when we are "so dispoged," but when we are not it is
offensive. It is essentially of advice that we may say speech
is silver and silence is gold. It always infers, however
gently it may be given, a certain superiority in the giver
over the receiver. Hence the sage Johnson hints that
"advice is offensive, not because it lays us open to unex-
pected regret, or convicts us of any fault which has escaped
our notice, but because it shows us that we are known to
others as well as to ourselves ; and the officious monitor is
persecuted with hatred, not because his accusation is false,
but because he assumes the superiority which we are not
willing to grant him, and has dared to detect what we desire
to conceal."

The " superiority " is perhaps the most galling to our
pride ; hence he who gives advice should do as nurses do
with their physic — give it in small doses and with something
to overcome the nausea it creates. The powder-and-jam
school so much affected in "pretty little tales for pretty
little children," and in sweet, angelic tracts, in which every-
body is made happy at the end — and all tears are very idle
tears, indeed, since they have been wept in quite a mistaken
notion of life — is one to which most professional advisers
are at last driven. In fact, every one is so opinionated that
he imagines that his own advice is better than any one else's
until he loses by it.

ADVICE GRATIS. 89

Swift confesses that he forgets whether advice is one of
the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the
moon, but certainly it ought to be there, since so much of
it is given and so much thrown away and lost. Even those
who ask advice do not take it —

" His friends were summoned on a point so nice
To pass their judgments and to give advice,
But fixed before and well resolved was he,
As those who ask advice are wont to be. "

And this is the only pleasurable bit of revenge that the
advisee has over the adviser. He need not take the advice,
and he can think the man who gives it an officious coxcomb
all the time he goes prosing on with his pros and cons and
his eternal pour et contre, of which the French Bar in the time
of Louis le Grand afforded so brilliant an example. The
lawyers balanced their periods and their quotations, quite
regardless of the sense or justice of the case, as an acrobat
balances his pole, and delighted the audience with their in-
tellectual agility. And the summing-up of the judge was an
equally clever piece of forensic cookery. But then it was
seen that advice in some cases is pleasant, and that is to the
third party, who listens to it, and admires the application
which he imagines that he sees ; the most scathing and
cutting sarcasms on the conduct of a prisoner at the bar are
always most relished by the audience in court. It is
pleasant to hear good advice given, or to read it when

90 THE BETTER SELF.

intended for others ; nay, we may recognize our own case
in that which is before us, and receive timely warning by a
light which was held out to save some other wanderer from
getting into trouble. It follows, then, that advice, amongst
other qualities, should be general rather than special : if it
fits our case, we profit by it ; but, when we get it made to
order, it is too often like an artistically-shaped dandy boot,
which pinches the wearer so terribly that it hinders rather
than aids his progression.

The best advice, and that likely to do most good, is like
the most wholesome bread, home-made. It is, perhaps,
for that reason the rougher, but the sweeter too, and the
most palatable. A gentleman the other day, summoned by
the school-board, paraded the fact that he was, very happily
for himself, under the governance of his wife. He was an
ass for making it public, but he might have been wisely
governed. Certainly some of the very wisest and bravest
advice men get is from their wives, although a wife is not
always nor necessarily a good adviser— ^she needs must be
somewhat of a partisan. But then she is certainly another,
a calmer, and a better self, and men wisely revert to them,
although too often one has reason to say with Burns : —

"Ah ! gentle dames ! it gars me greet,
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthened sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises ! "

( 91 )

IX.

PRIDE IN THE FAMIL Y.

"The big Ha* Bible once his father's pride," is not now
the work most studied by the middle-class Briton, but there
is a book, a very large book indeed, containing nearly
two thousand pages of double columns and close print,
which Thackeray called the " Englishman's Bible." It is
not his ledger, nor his book of the law, nor his Shakspere,
nor his Milton, nor even his tables of interest, by which
he can calculate to a fraction all his gains in the various
companies he has joined ; but simply his peerage. It
contains about as many lies as any book can well
contain, although it is fairly edited, and may be called
historical But the fact is, that this peerage to which
Sir Bernard Burke puts his name as editor, and to which
he pays much attention, is contributed to by the families
themselves, the exploits of whose progenitors it dilates
upon, or the bare names of whose ancestors it contains.
Hence there arises a mass of fiction and error which is
incalculable. Ancestors are found for any one who achieves

92 THE BETTER SELF.

distinction, for any Lord Mayor who may be made a
baronet, or for any Court favourite who, however un-
worthily, maybe raised to the Peerage. We are told that
the ancestors of this nobleman fought at Hastings or
Bosworth-field, and how the founders of that family claim
kindred with the Vikings of the North, and sailed across
the German Ocean with King Olaf or Red Eric the Earl.
Such, to say the least of it, is difficult to prove, and opens
up a very serious question when proved. All that one can
say of being descended from the Conqueror himself is that
one traces one's pedigree up to a brave man ; but surely we
are not all cowards to be so proud of bravery ; and if, like
that of the Yankee pedlar, our " father had fit inter the
Great Revolution " as a common soldier, we might be more
proud of the immediate than of the distant progenitor. But
all men in a battle are brave, or they pass for brave, which
is in result the same thing ; and the companions of William
the Conqueror were merely a small band of hired soldiers,
whose descendants have most likely died down in the
troublous times that succeeded him, or were afterwards used
tip in the Crusades, the Norman wars, and the Wars of the
Roses ; so that very few really Norman families remain.
But the argument of long descent being put aside, as
difficult to prove and useless when proved, we shall not do
away with that feeling called "family pride" — a sort of
reflected selfishness, which, like the house-leek or the stone-

PRIDE IN THE FAMILY. 93

crop, seems to grow and flourish all the better, the smaller
the nourishment it receives. If you plant stone-crop in a
rich loam, it runs " spindly," as the gardeners say, and dies
out ; but if you stick it in the cranny of an old wall, where
there is only a bit of dried mortar and a small portion of
rotten stone for it to adhere to, it flourishes admirably. So
is it with family pride.

In Mr. Dickens's novels family pride is skilfully por-
trayed in very lowly people. Mrs. Wilfer, whose husband
is a poor clerk, but a very angel of goodness, takes no
delight in him, and does not even know what a treasure
she has; but gives herself airs about herself, her family
and her belongings. Sb also in " Nicholas Nickleby,"
Mrs. Kenwigs, whose husband is an ivory turner, is always
talking of her uncle, who is a tax collector. Women
abound in this pride much more than men do ; and it is a
subtle touch of observation both in Dickens and Thackeray
that induces them to make their characters always refer to
the official position of the hero who ennobles the family.
" My uncle the beadle, my grandfather the turncock," —
such officials have graced families heretofore and do so now,
and are just as legitimately referred to as " My uncle the
bishop," or " my grandfather the general ; " for it is to be
accepted as a rule, almost without an exception, that when-
ever a man rises he rises through himself, by his own efforts,
and that his family has nothing to do with his advancement

94 THE BETTER SELF.

— that is, his brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces,
grandsons and daughters, and all the rest who brag about
him after he has risen.

To vaunt our family is, in a cunning way, indirectly but
efficaciously to vaunt ourselves. Yet some of us have
portraits in our own family, to which we own a mysterious
and perhaps a stupid attachment; we feel that somehow
such portraits prove that the family has been compact and
known, and rich for some time, although the present repre-
sentative may be poor. We have one or two old books,
heirlooms, a chair or so, and such like wrecks of genteel
ancestry, and of course are attached to them. Nay, we do
not despise as we ought the genealogical tree ; and yet we
know that great great grandfathers and uncles did little or
nothing save serve in the army, or sit upon the bench as
county magistrates, as stupid as the rest And we know,
philosophically, that the meanest beggar is as far descended
as the king, and that the beggar's son could count a roll of
ancestry, if he only knew how, longer by one than the
beggar ; nay, we know that the poor have, as a rule in life,
been better and purer than the rich, and that it would be
wiser to be proud of being " the son of parents passed
into the skies" than of being the descendant of Caesar,
Alexander, , Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, or any
such conquerors. And yet, being men, we and every one
of our readers have a certain family pride, although we

PRIDE IN THE FAMIL Y. 95

laugh at it, and sneer at it in others, as any sensible person
must, because in its sum total it is a distorted reflection of
self — that is alL

Some families, which cannot boast even a rector or a
militia captain to date from, take pride in personal attri-
butes, which some others would think rather to be distortions
than otherwise. Most of us are familiar with the Brunswick
mouth, which shows the front teeth, and gives a somewhat
foolish appearance to the family; but then its possessors
reckon it a beauty, because it is a mark of breed. There
was the Austrian chin of poor Marie Antoinette — a long
chin, not pretty, but distinctive ; then there is the retreating
forehead of the Braganzas, a proof of high breed no doubt,
since by too much breeding the Braganzas very nearly
approached the apes. A better feature in English families
is the Plantagenet long flat cheek, which Norman peculiarity
Emerson says may be seen in Englishmen of to-day. Nay,
he tells us that we preserve the very features of the old race
amongst us. " In the bronze monuments of crusaders
lying cross-legged in the Temple Church in London, and in
those of Worcester and Salisbury Cathedrals, which are
seven hundred years old, the heads are of the same type as
the best youthful heads of men now in England ; please by
beauty of the same character; — an expression blending
good nature, valour, and refinement, and mainly that un-
corrupt youth in the face of manhood, which is daily seen
in the streets of London."

96 THE BETTER SELF.

It is family pride that makes one copy out that passage,
for the nation is in itself but one great family ; and villages,
towns, counties, or countries, have a natural pride in
knowing that the great and good qualities of the men they
have produced are appreciated ; and there is this about the
feeling which is admirable, which is, that it leads us to
admire that which is noble in others, although we may
believe that in some indirect way the glory is reflected back
upon ourselves. Thus in Yorkshire, when a racehorse has
been successful in winning a race, the glory of the achieve-
ment is shared by the whole stable or village ; as if, indeed,
a horse from that identical stable were any the better on
that account. But the glory of a family does help a man
through life, until, indeed, he becomes very debased. Men
believe in association ; and a Stanley is honourable, not
from the best motives, but because he is a Stanley. Noblesse
oblige. Having to date from a fair lineage, a man will be
careful not to soil that lineage : thus the Spartan boys were
brave, not alone because their nerves were stronger than
those of others, but for the reason that they were Spartans,
and had an hereditary virtue descending upon them from
their family or other people. It was not a physical — it was
a mental gift : to be base or effeminate was so utterly out of
the practice of the Spartans, that it never entered into their
minds to become so.

With this kind of family pride we can all sympathize.

PRIDE IN THE FAMILY. 97

When we hear a man proud of the Smith nose, the mouth
of the Browns, the forehead of the Joneses, or the hereditary
squint or wall-eye of the Williamses, we may set him down
as a fool ; but when we meet with a man who finds it
incumbent on him to act well and honourably, because his
family always did so before him, we are delighted with that
honourable respect which he pays to the virtue of his family*
And such hereditary virtues are not uncommon. " My
father," said a tradesman, the other day, " always paid his
rent at twelve o'clock on quarter-day, and I will always
do so;" and the man, through life, had made great struggles
to keep up to that excellent virtue of punctual payment.
So we have an hereditary forwardness in brave actions :
some families in out-lying villages are always ready to head
the list of Christmas benevolences ; some are devoted to a
life at sea; some to the army and to particular service
therein ; — all through family pride. Certain regiments, as
the " Fighting Fiftieth," having once earned a reputation,
dower every private soldier in their ranks with a family pride
in their good name, which makes him all the better man.
Reputation continues to act long after the particular deed
that won it is forgotten.

There is, then, even a very beautiful side from which we
may regard this foolish pride. When pride in ancestry came
up we hardly know; for certainly all the ancients did not look,
as we do, to a man's family, since the Romans could adopt

H

98 THE BETTER SELF.

a total stranger, who, thereon, had all the merit of blood-
descent Some people think that the lineage of our
Saviour, given in the commencement of two of our Gospels
—and given for an especial purpose— set men's minds,
always prone to self-flattery, upon the utter vanity of birth.
But certainly the ancients did refer to paternal acres, and
the deeds of their ancestors, as well as we do; and Plutarch,
in his familiar, easy way, lets us see that the pride of
ancestry was no stranger to him. In the life of Brutus, who
slew Caesar, and who is one of Plutarch's great favourites,
he lets us into the secret at once : " The great ancestor,"
says he, "of Marcus Brutus, was that Junius Brutus to whom
the Romans erected a statue of brass, and placed it in the
Capitol among their kings." Again, speaking of his hero,
he says that " he was formed for virtue, both by nature — />.,
descent — and education;" and he further on tells us that
the partisans of Caesar would not have it that Marcus Brutus
was descended from Junius Brutus, whose family, they
said, was extinct with his two sons. Marcus Brutus was,
according to them, a mere plebeian, the son of a steward,
who was " one Brutus, of mean extraction." What does it
matter to us now who did the noble action ? What do we
care if the Bruce came of a line of kings, or if Wallace
was a mere common fellow? Nelson, Blake, Cromwell,
have served their country ; we hardly want to know whether
they were of noble blood or not How many disputes have

PRIDE IN THE FAMIL Y. 99

we had about Shakspere ! — some saying that he was the
son of a wool-stapler and butcher, who was of mere common
and puddle blood; and others that his lineage, like his
name, was knightly. Certainly he himself paid for his
father's grant of arms, that well-known spear on a bend ;
but surely no one would have cared to ask whether he was
well-born or not, if he had been as undistinguished as the
thousands of fine-blooded noblemen who lived and died
while he was writing plays ! There is this strange peculiarity
about family pride, which is indicative of weakness — it likes
to claim all great people as of a great race. We are Chinese
in our sympathies. A great man in China ennobles his
ancestors ; he cannot do a great deed without very properly
reflecting a lustre on his father and mother and grandfather
— the reverse way to our own, but nevertheless the wiser
way.

" Everything in this world," said a great philosopher,
" has two handles ; " and if we take hold of the right one
we shall do well. The man who prides himself upon the
worth of his family may himself become worthy even by
that weakness. But woe to the man who has nothing to
boast of but the position of his father, the beauty or riches
of his mother, and the virtues of his ancestors ! " He is,"
said Sir Thomas Overbury, " very much like a potato — the
best part of him is underground." Even Lord Lyndsay, in
his " Lives of the Lyndsays," is obliged to resort to a senti-

•>.- -.-;

# w ^ <• * * *

ioo THE BETTER SELF.

mental regard to ancestry, rather than a pride in it, of which
he is half-ashamed, and talks of the "additional energy
which the precepts of a father should inspire us with, when
we trace the transmission of those precepts from father to
son through successive generations." Alas ! such tracing is
a difficult task. We cannot honour a man who stands for
merit merely "on his forefather's feet, by heraldry proved
valiant and discreet ; " for we must in our heart of hearts
believe with Young that self-help and merit arising from our
own virtues and actions are the things to be looked at.

" Men should press forward in the glorious chase ;
Nobles look backward, and so lose the race.
Let high birth triumph ! What can be more great ?
Nothing, — but merit in a low estate."

( ioi )

SNEERS AND ILL-NATURE.

It is a great deal more easy to hurt than it is to please
and gratify a man. The Emperor who offered a reward for
a new pleasure, would have been quite satisfied with an old
pain ; a kick on his august shins, for instance, would have
roused his ire sooner than the sweetest sauce would have
stirred his jaded appetite.

Recognizing and illustrating the above truth, the fools
of the human family take to jeering, sneering, and ill-nature,
as the readiest way of making their weight felt A gnat
would perhaps sink into the insignificance of being forgotten,
if he did not make himself felt by his sting ; and the thrust-
ing out of the bayonet of a wasp is no doubt a sudden
pleasure to it. Moreover there is an immense power in a
laugh, especially when raised at the right time. Few persons,
unless they are exceedingly strong-minded, can stand against
it ; and when a fashion or a mode of thought is overgrown
and old, a sound honest laugh will often knock it down.

102 THE BETTER SELF.

Lord Byron wrote of that brave and honest satire "Don
Quixote " —

" Cervantes laugh? d Spain's chivalry away," —

but his lordship did not explain* that Spain's true chivalry
had long since departed, and that the mere outer clothing,
shell, imitation, symbol, and idol stood in its stead, to
be knocked to pieces by a worn-out, broken-down old
soldier, dying from neglect, poverty, cold, and hunger,
and yet the most powerful and by far the best man in all
Spain; truly, almost the only one, for what to us, to our
grandfathers, and great-great-grandsons, will be the Spain
of his day, except Cervantes ? All the pride of her mon-
arch, great as it was, so great as to disdain the earth and
to claim Heaven, — all the pride of its great churchmen, who
swayed the minds and the faith of millions, and who dictated
the very terms upon which Heaven was to be won and
Hell avoided, — all the pride of the great swelling hidalgos,
the great dons, cousins of the king, and of the bluest blood
that circulated in Castile, — all the pride of the clerks, the
heralds, the officers, the scriveners, and the very beggars
(and a Spanish beggar at that time held himself higher than
an English nobleman) — all of this was shaken to pieces,
and faded like the ghost in " Hamlet " " on the crowing
of the cock," before the honest laughter of Cervantes ; and
he remains, worth more than all of his nation and his day
put together.

SNEERS AND ILL-NA TURE. 103

So there is, as there should be, much power in a laugh.
There is also much in its imitation, — its bastard imitation,
the sneer. A good sound laugh is something pre-eminently
human. It is not godlike, because we suppose it is not
compatible with the modern awe-full notions of the god-
head. But the old divinities laughed and smiled ; and
when the divinities laughed, as at the tripping up of Hebe
in serving the nectar, or at human follies, the heavens
re-echoed. For the old gods were more human and nearer
to man, being creatures of his high imagination ; therefore
they laughed ; and man laughs, — human, as Shakspere has
it ; but the devils sneer, and of late it has become fashion-
able to imitate the devils.

Why sneering should be thought clever is not difficult
to guess. The sneer implies a superiority ; and the insect
on the leaf is too apt in this world to affect an easy victory,
which he has not won over the insect in the dust. He who
has not battled with life, and knows little of its hardships,
not only of the difficulty of gaining a battle, but of keeping
his soldiers together on the march, will criticize the old and
well-worn veterans who have won in many a hard fight, —
will detract from their merit ; and after the thing is done,
point out an apparently easier and better way to have done
it. And the very act, illnatured as it is, seems to confer
upon the sneerer the merit which he detracts from another;
just as in savage countries the painted and tattooed brave,

104 THE BETTER SELF.

who has killed a warrior of merit and excellence, claims the
victories of the deceased manslayer.

Moreover, the human heart does so love truth, and
gives so willing a credence to that which people say, that in
many cases the detractor is believed ; and this is especially
the case when the sneerer has the power of commanding the
utterance of a respectable print. The oracular pronuncia-
mientos of the newspapers are sometimes ridiculous enough ;
but they have before this broken hearts, and made the
sensitive breast of the poet or artist dilate and throb with
the most painful feelings. The animadversions of non-
military critics, written at home by the fireside, and ex-
pressed with as much freedom as ignorance, have been
more than suspected of driving an officer to give battle
at an illjudged time, and have cost both men and reputa-
tion ; and more than one gallant man has been driven into
enforced exile, to misery and disgrace, nay, even to suicide,
from the same cause. And yet it was not envy, nor hatred,
nor malice, that prompted the conceited wiseacres to act as
they did; but merely a priggish delight to believe nobody in
the right but themselves, a wish to offend and to hurt, and
a love of meddling. It is a happy thing for us all that they
often burn their own fingers.

After a certain time spent in practising the art of sneer-
ing, wicked and really stupid as it is, the initiated get a
certain delicacy of touch which is easily seen by an acute

SNEERS AND ILL-NATURE. 105

observer, but which is dreadfully offensive to the young.
They cannot stand up, if they are at all ingenuous and
intense in their modesty and feeling, against such sneerers ;
while they find, and find readily, quite enough strength
to repel the coarser and the less practised scandal. Sheri-
dan has so well described the two — the coarser scandalizer,
and the more effective and dangerous sneerer — that it would
be a loss not to quote him. "Mrs. Clackett," he says, "has
a very pretty talent, and a great deal of industry; she has
been the cause of six matches being broken off, and of three
sons being disinherited ; of four forced elopements, as many
close confinements, nine separate maintenances, and two
divorces. She generally designs well, has a free tongue and
a bold invention ; but her colouring is too dark, and her
outlines are often extravagant. She wants that delicacy of
tint and mellowness of sneer which distinguish your lady-
ship's scandal. Everybody allows that Lady Sneerwell can
do more with a word or a look than many can do with the
most laboured detail."

It is with the touch of a master also that Sheridan shows
us the motive for such malignity, while he makes us almost
pity the woman whom we should detest "Wounded
myself in the early part of my life by the envenomed tongue
of slander," says Lady Sneerwell, " I confess I have since
known no pleasure equal to that of reducing others to the
level of my own reputation"

io6 THE BETTER SELF.

It is indeed that motive which induces our modern
Sneerwells to indulge in their smaller and less noxious
enterprises ; which, however, if smaller, have the advantage
of being considerably meaner. We can understand why a
woman who has herself been stung should feel impelled by
an envious spirit to blacken the characters of her sisters ;
but a generous nature cannot but be astonished to find
that persons who are unknown to him, whom he has not
wronged, nay, those whom he has benefited, are ready to
detract from his modest stock of merit, — to whisper, to hint,
to asperse, and to blacken without a cause. But such is
the fashion of the day. Let any one have a name known to
the public, and let that name be mentioned, and as surely
as the night follows the day, after a little cold praise, cold
as the morning's sun in winter, hot envy and jealous detrac-
tion follow. " He is clever of course, and the work would
be good, if " And then the floodgates of speech are

*

opened, and the poor fellow has black marks by the dozen
affixed to him. And frequently all this will be done for
just the same reason as that which induced the countryman
to cast in his oyster shell to the ballot to banish Aristides ;
not because he knew any evil of that great man, but because
he was tired of hearing him praised ; nay, he was sick of his
name. And it unfortunately happens that the temper of
the public is such that sometimes, just at the turn of the
tide as it were, the detractor, by a well-timed word, gets

SNEERS AND ILL-NA Tl/RE. 107

the best of it There was once a sufficiently meritorious
comedy called "Sancho Panza," produced in Paris, as Manage
tells the story. At the close of the third act the Duke in
the piece yawns, and says, " I begin to get tired of Sancho."
" Egad, so do I ! " said a wag in the pit, taking his hat up,
and walking out ; and that word and action settled the fate
of the comedy. All the house joined in the laugh and the
yawn, and the play (in theatrical phraseology) was damned.
More than one meritorious author has been sneered out of
public favour rather because he had a queer name than for
any thing else. There is Mr. Amos Cottle, for instance,
who was by no means a fool.

" Oh, Amos Cottle ! Phoebus ! what a name
For endless ages to hand down to Fame ! "

sneered Lord Byron: but Cottle no more deserved to be
sneered at for his name than his lordship to be blamed
for his lameness. The whole question of names is curious ;
and, if Mr. Cottle could have been born a Howard, a
Plantagenet, or a Percy, perhaps he would have so chosen.
There is an author of the present day who may have written
platitudes, but has certainly never written any thing vicious,
while he has written much that is incentive to good ; yet he
has been sneered down systematically, partly because he
possesses a somewhat comic name, which looks funny in
a clever article. And directly one of the sneerers began to
attack him, as he was not very big, all the others followed,

io8 THE BETTER SELF.

until the public has at last begun to believe against its own
belief, and to abandon an old favourite.

There is some comfort, even to a wise and reflective man,
to know that the sneerers punish themselves ; but it is small
comfort to think that there are so many of them that the age
has sensibly deteriorated in generosity within these few
years. The young men some fifteen years ago used to
believe in generous impulses, in the advance of the masses,
in progress, and a grand future. They would patiently sit
out even the turgid love-poetry of Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton, and believe in innocence and beauty. But now-
a-days the young man has grown cunning. All he has to
say is, " Not for Joseph," with a sly wink ; he knows too
much, or affects to know too much, for his compeers ; and
when the deeds of a hero or the self-sacrifice of a patriot are
mentioned to him, all that he wants to know is, " How
much did he get by it ? " " What will it pay," is his ques-
tion, rather than what is right; and thus biased, not by
principle, but by results, he is just the man to believe in
the veneered cleverness of a tribe of writers who think
to raise themselves by depressing others. For proof of
this we have only to read some of the smart essayists of the
day, who place the title of some virtue or good quality at
. the top of their essay, and descant upon it only to prove
that it does not exist

Were we to consider the matter deeply, we might lose

/

SNEERS AND ILL-NATURE. 109

temper about it Sneering is so far from being clever,
that it encourages the most detestable of vices. Sir R.
Maltravers remarks, that "it is a corroding cancer most
destructive to human happiness, and it shortens human
life. Lawyers, players, and politicians, are much subject
to it;" and he might have added, small poets, writers
of books, artists, architects, and all whose works are more
public than others'. When a man is very great indeed,
his merit beats down some opposition ; but what it beats
down is the openly-expressed envy, not that which is
secret and most harmful. With nations — for with them
it exists — it is the cause of war, having been first its
pretext ; with individuals, it is the cause of " envy, hatred,
and malice, and all uncharitableness," from which in our
Litany we heartily pray, " Good Lord deliver us ! "

We have said before that it is some comfort to a wise
man, who never rejoices in the evil of any one, to know
that these sneerers come to grief themselves, and, like
the priests of Baal, howl vigorously to their false gods
in vain: for envy, bad in most things, is good in this,
that it sorely torments the man who indulges in it. We
can read in letters and pamphlets, still extant, the mean
jealousy of the smaller poets, who sneered at Shakspere
as a "Johannes Factotum, the veriest Shake-scene in all
the country, a fellow who would do you whole hamlets
of plays ; " and we know, as certainly as if we had his

no THE BETTER SELF.

doctor's certificate, that the jaundiced passion made the

poor wretch pale and miserable, and made him, as he

says, lament for " his groat's worth of wit bought with

a pound's worth of repentance." Happily, in the greatest

of poets we have no record of this mean spite. We do

not find him sneering at anything ; his creations bear some

of his divine soul in them, and look upon the blundering,

ignorant constables with a pitying good-humour too noble

and too open for a sneer. But he — even he — bursts out

into a flame of declamation against the detractors of a

great man: —

"Now I feel

Of what coarse metal ye are moulded, — envy.

How eagerly ye follow my disgraces,

As if it fed ye ! and how sleek and wanton

Ye appear in every thing may bring my ruin !

Follow your envious courses, men of malice — "

The good man, therefore, must rejoice to think how much
the envious man misses of the good of this world, knowing
as he does that when the sun shines and the weather is
charming, the envious fellow is unhappy within because
of another's success, and will not enjoy the good around
him, because others are, as he fancies, enjoying more
pleasure than he.

Again, while the sneering critic detracts from a man,
he at the same time adds to him, since envy is as much
the compliment to greatness and merit as imitation is

SNEERS AND ILL-NA TURE. 1 1 1

a proof of real admiration. If, as the chained eagle
Napoleon would have it when he was chained and ill,
the Duke of Wellington was no general, and that all his
victories were merely lucky hits, is it likely that he
would have stooped to constantly malign and criticize
his actions?

No one who tries to raise himself to something better
than he has been, but will try and root out that common
itch of ill nature, so general at present, and so noxious
in a family. It is a vice easily fallen into ; a young fellow
says a bitter thing to his sister, and makes the girl turn
red and cry, and he feels his weight Then he tries his
hand somewhere else, until he finally sets up, after leaving
a vinegary reputation, and being thoroughly hated at his
college, for a critic. And a nice time he has of it
Criticism is not like Rosherville, exactly the place to
spend a happy day, or life, in. No one is so soon forgotten
as a critic. He makes an actor's or an artist's reputation,
and he is forgotten and unknown himself. The very men
he has served neglect him when their name is made. The
reputations he tries to kill survive him, and the poor
fellows whom he stabs, not knowing their assailant, write
to thank him for his kind assistance. Thus even the
most effective envy punishes its user.

As a shadow, when visible, is a proof of the existence
of a brighter light, so the attraction of envy and bitter

ii2 THE BE TTER SELF.

words may be taken as a proof of merit This may
console the individual. General detraction, which is a
safe way to indulge in sneering, does not, however, admit
of such consolation. It is an ill-bred, ill-natured and
nurtured vice this. Its general capacity gives it a very
frequent particular application ; it raises jealousy, and
poisons honest, simple natures.

The general sneerer detracts from the general stock
of goodness, or renders it negative, which is the same
thing ; and in his Book of Proverbs, Solomon declares such
a spirit to be " rottenness to the bones." Such can exist,
not only in the mind of a man, but in the feelings of a
generation. With such a spirit nothing is fair, no one
is wise, no one is good ; there is a speck in every fruit, a
flaw in every fair glass, alloy in the purest gold. It
laments over prosperity, sickens at the sight of health,
shuts its eyes to all beauties. And thus, with half-shut
eyes, with a soul squatting somewhere in his body, the
envious man sits at home, doing little but breaking some
poor spider's web, which the busy insect as industriously
remakes.

But he who would build up the better self, who is wise
and generous, opens his heart not only to the fairness of
noble and beautiful things, but even to search for the
soul of goodness in things evil ; while the great soul, by
the light shining within it, at last finds that all things

SNEERS AND ILL-NATURE. 113

have their place and all their beauties, and that as know-
ledge and patience grow, so the certainty of the triumph
of good grows too, and with it trust in God and faith in
man.

From such bright sunlight envy slinks . abashed, and
the sneer wounds not, while the wise man smiles as he
reflects : the ambitious man may gain power ; the proud
man satisfaction, luxury, and gluttony, a fugitive and animal
pleasure ; the miser may joy in the brightness of his gold ;
but the envious man reaps nothing but vexatioa

1 14 THE BETTER SELF.

XL

DISCONTENT AND GRUMBLING,

Closely allied with envy, so closely that one always accom-
panies the other, is discontent To grumble and get on is
supposed to be the natural course of an Englishman's way
in the world; and he certainly is in this respect a living
contradiction, in that, not being a very vocal and limber-
tongued person, he does a great deal of grumbling. We
are told that we are a nation of grumblers, at the same time
that we are certainly a people which has the utmost appre-
ciation of silence. In what other nation would the German
proverb, " Silence is golden, speech is silver " — which
Carlyle has made his own — have taken root and spread,
but in ours? What other people would have gladly wel-
comed the assertion that they were inarticulate and dumb,
awaiting the " eternal silences ? " With what pathos does
the poet's appeal touch us —

4 "A beggar that is dumb, you know,

Deserves a double pity ! "

DISCONTENT AND GRUMBLING. 115

For what charity are we warmer, than for that which looks
especially after the deaf and dumb ? Who have taken such
care of " dumb " animals, as instituting hospitals for lost
dogs, but the English ? What nation save ours would have
welcomed the graceful phrase of Lord Mansfield — " Not the
brute creation, but the mute creation. " How struck we
are with the fact that certain prisoners will not plead, but
mysteriously " stand mute " — mute for ever in history, and
solving no question! How we love certain persons who
figure in our national records after the fashion of " William
the Silent" and "Single-Speech Hamilton!" And with
what devotion an English constituency clung to the member
of Parliament who had served them faithfully in the House
of Commons for twenty-five years, doing able work on com-
mittees, and who yet, metaphorically speaking, had never v
opened his mouth !

It may be taken as a fact, then, that the English and
Scotch really do admire silent people. It is an old love
that they have. And with few exceptions silence is a very
admirable thing. The old Roman said truly — •

" Saepius locutum, nunquam me tacuisse poenitet ; "

for, often as we may regret our spoken words, it is but
seldom that silence gives us pain. But it has its good side
— and a very fine side that is — and its bad side, which is ?
about as dreadful as the other is beautiful, so that it cannot

n6 THE BETTER SELF.

always be adhered to as a rule in life. We will not go the
length of Shakspere, who tells us that—

" Silence is only commendable
In a neat's tongue dried and a maid not vendible ; "

but we must say that it is not always to be practised We
cannot put down a hard and fast line for specific silences, as
if we were monks of La Trappe, or pupils of Pythagoras,
undergoing one's five years' term of probation. It is curious
how often human nature has reverted to this vow of silence.
The disciple of Brahma, the Pythagorean, the Monk, and
the Quaker, equally betook themselves to silent meditation.
To this day the Quakers are the most silent of all people,
and have a good sound rule in their churches, to keep
silence before they speak, or admonish, or pray. It is said
that during one of these awful silences the wicked and witty
Tom Brown entered a meeting-house, and cried, "Hallo!
here's a penny tart for the first who opens his mouth. "
" Young man," cried an indignant and most venerable elder,

" young mah, why " " The tart's yours ! " said the wit,

bestowing on him the article, and quickly making his exit
Here the Quakers were at a disadvantage, because they did
not disregard the insulting offer — speech was but silver
there ; but, in respect of another Quaker episode, related
by Charles Lamb, the case was different. Three Friends
on a stage-coach journey, after having eaten a large

DISCONTENT AND GRUMBLING. 117

luncheon, objected, just as the coach was about to start,
to the charge. " Friend," said the eldest to the landlord,
" I make thee a legal tender," holding out a shilling instead
of half-a-crown. The other Quakers did the same ; but
Boniface wished their shillings in a place where they would
probably melt — he would not take the coin. The first
Quaker said nothing, but, looking on his friends, pocketed
his shilling, and walked in silence to the coach. His com-
panions did the same. Lamb, half a Quaker himself,
followed their example, and, all having gravely ascended, they
were shut in and whirled off. Nor was the silence broken
for a mile or so, when the eldest asked, gravely, " Friend,

what was the price of corn at market ? " Here the

silent ones had the best of the bargain, and it is but just to
set one story against the other.

In half of the events of life we may safely assert that
people are given to say a great deal too much; and the
terrible waste of time, of ideas, of power, of vitality, by
this unceasing gabble, is to be deplored. The marvel is
that these gossips will themselves own that little or no good
comes of it, and that they often repent of a hasty word, but
never of a discreet silence. With some persons — not only
of the female sex — there is a rage for " talk " which amounts
to a mania — a persistent intention to say something, no
matter what — a kind of hen-like love of cackling, a deter-
mination of words to the mouth, which can only be looked

u8 THE BETTER SELF.

at as a disease. There are those who indulge in incessant
gabblements till they die. It is true that the power of
holding one's tongue is not given to all of us ; nor is it held
at all periods of our lives. A pretty good rule as regards
talking would be only to speak when one has really some-
thing to say, and then to say it in as few words as possible.
The general complaint is that there is too much said, and
too much written. Tacitus, the historian, is said to have
cut his cloth too narrow to clothe his thoughts, so that one
has to guess at his meaning. There are few writers nowa-
days who resemble Tacitus, and still fewer speakers. It is
not the man who says much, but the man who talks wisely,
who is listened to ; the word in season which we are told is
so "good" is only good because it is in season; even sorrow,
which is usually loquacious and voluble enough, becomes
respectable and even venerable when silently borne. It
may be all very well to cry out at first — some natures must
do so;

" Give sorrow tongue — the grief that will not speak
Whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break. "

In short, in nine-tenths of the world's affairs there is not
only, as the nigger has it, " nuff sed," but a great deal too
much said. Our passions are run to tatters, our trials are
made ridiculous by being exaggerated, our vices are mag-
nified rather than concealed, and our virtues disappear
under the flowery covering of our speeches. If you want

DISCONTENT AND GRUMBLING. 119

to make a man hated, praise him ; if you wish to excite the
world's envy, talk about him. If you had wished to make
the patriarch Job himself — in the midst of all his sorrows —
contemptible, you would have published a daily bulletin of
his sufferings, and, by the time such a method had been but
half carried out, the man of many troubles would have
become a bore to everybody.

We must not forget one use of silence, which is, it seems
to us, diabolical. It is when one holds an important secret
which might save a life, or clear up a mystery, and dies with
it, or so holds it that the person to be annoyed, who is
generally a husband, is ready to " burst " with suppressed
curiosity. This sort of silence is a terrible weapon in a
wife's hands, and in general life occasions more and more
talking as time elapses. A soft answer turns away wrath,
and when a wife or a husband is irritated there is nothing
like letting a subject drop. Then silence is indeed golden.
But the silence persisted in — as by the lady in the old
comedy, who, in reply to her husband's, "For Heaven's
sake, my dear, do tell me what you mean," obstinately
keeps her lips closed — is an instrument of deadly torture.
And what a clatter such a foolish silence makes in history !
Shall we ever hear the end of the controversy as to who was
the Man with the Iron Mask ? Many persons must have
known the wretched man, and yet they let future ages
" burst " with curiosity about it Then, again, there is that

120 THE BETTER SELF.

anent Perkin Warbeck, as to the virtue (?) of Mary Queen
of Scots, as to the meaning of the last word of Charles I.,
"Remember," as to who wrote Junius, and as to Lord
Byron's most dreadful story, upon which, as Doctor Lushing-
ton, dying lately, made no sign, there will every now and
then arise a doubt. In each of these cases silence was by
no means golden.

The grumblers are a widely different race compared to
the silent They are eloquent persons, whose rhetoric is
generally employed in telling the world of their own wrongs.
And it is astonishing how small these wrongs are, what
atoms magnified, and what out-of-the-way things a man will
grumble about. Let us own readily enough that it is man
who is the chief grumbler, and that his troubles are often of
the smallest \ and it by no means follows that the man who
cries out the loudest is the most hurt Nor with the habitual
grumbler or the hypochondriac has the fact that the troubles
complained of do not properly belong to him anything to do
with it. When Sterne met poor sick Doctor Smollett on his
travels, the author of Roderick Random was in a bad
humour with the world, in failing health, much troubled
with many cares, and it suited Sterne to picture him as
" Smelfungus " — for Smollett had been a critic, and such
persons have few friends. " Smelfungus," says Sterne, " had
been the grand tour, and had seen nothing to admire ; all
was barren from Dan to Beersheba ; and when I met him

DISCONTENT AND GRUMBLING. 121

he fell foul of the Venus de Medici, and abused her lady-
ship like a common fish-fag. ' I will tell it/ cried he — * I
will tell it to the world ! ' ' You had better/ said Sterne,
with caustic bitterness, 'tell it to your physician.'" Now,
what had the Venus de Medici to do with the grumbler?
He saw little beauty in her, and all the world saw a great
deal. Why, then, trouble about the matter? A wise man
would have been silent, but every small hair frets and
irritates a too sensitive skin. If we really confined our
own thoughts to what concerned us, or would without
doubt benefit others, we should have little to grumble at —
that is, if it were possible to a grumbler to regard anything
as little or great. On the contrary, such a one would put a
drop of the clearest water beneath a microscope, and find
something in it to grumble at ; or he would grumble because
his hair was dark and not light, or vice versd, or because he
was not an inch taller or shorter. King Alphonso of
Castile is said to have grumbled because God Almighty
did not consult him when he made man, and has left it on
record that if He had done so we should have had many
things altered for the better.

So universal is the practice, that it has been more than
once said that, if half-a-dozen men — Englishmen of course —
are found seated comfortably together in their club window
in Pall Mall, or behind the red-latticed window of a public
house, and they seem quiet and cozy, one may assert, without

122 THE BETTER SELF.

fear of contradiction, that they are grumbling. In five cases
out of ten, perhaps, when William talks confidentially to his
Mary between whiffs of his cigar, or after tea with his pipe,
he is also grinding away at that Englishman's organ, a
grumble. He is unfolding for the hundredth time to that
sweet and matronly bosom the fact that the world has not
done half as well by him as it has by Tom and George, who
came out of the same nest as he did, or hailed from the same
county. "And you, my dear," he will say, throwing a lump
of sugar into the bitter cup to stimulate his wife's interest —
" look at you, and at Brown's wife, and see what she has to
wear !"

As a rule — God bless them for it — the wives sympathize
with their husband's grumble, and are entirely of opinion
that their William is a somewhat ill-used man, and has not
had his deserts. It is very beautiful and natural this, pro-
vided it does not go too far. It makes man and wife more
friendly, and knits them together; and it may be said safely
enough that a man's wife really knows more of his merits than
anybody else, how patiently he has worked, how good, clever,
and suggestive he is, how upright and honourable. The
fault of the matter is that in the matrimonial grumble, women
sometimes forget that the man they admire is perhaps not
one generally liked As a rule, it generally strikes us, and
our wives too, that Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson have
been amply rewarded, and that Fortune has passed over our

DISCONTENT AND GRUMBLING. 123

heads alone. If they have failed, we know why; if they get
into a mess, they deserve it; if they achieve fame and a
fortune, we wonder at their "luck." But what we grumble
at is, that they do it and not we; and, on the other hand —
happy and beautiful thought ! — they look over on our side
of the hedge, and grumble, perhaps, because their potatoes
are not coming up so well as ours. At the same time, it is,
as has been frequently remarked, astonishing how easily we
bear any misfortune that may happen to Jones — which is,
indeed, only paralleled, by the ease with which Jones bears
that which happens to us. We have been told that it is
somewhat cruel to beat a cripple with his own crutches, but
it is what we all do when we say to a man who has fallen,
"Ah, I told you so ; I thought you would drop !" We never
grumble when Brown falls and breaks his leg, except he
should be carrying a basket of our eggs; but we are much
concerned, and take a turn at our domestic organ, if any
person treads, even lightly, on our toe.

The men who grumble belong to every class, and
generally, the more a man has the more discontent he shows.
He is higher up the ladder, and sees more of the view, and
still struggles to get at that which is beyond ; while those on
the ground seem to be well content if they can ever get a
glimpse of the landscape. Hence it is that there is more
real content among t;he poor than among the rich; indeed —

" Poor and content is rich, and rich enough."

124 THE BETTER SELF.

But, of all grumblers, the ambitious man in a high position,
and with really great talents, is — if he be not a philosophic
angel — the greatest grumbler. We must remember that it
was Alexander the Great who cried because he had no more
worlds to conquer, and Hannibal who rushed over the Alps
and fell upon Italy when he could have more securely de-
fended his country at home. So, in our time, our captains
and military men, our clergymen and authors, and even our
musicians and painters, are great grumblers. And so it is
with all men whose labour is hard but spasmodic, and who
have leisure to think. Add to this, that the people of whom
we write belong to professions where the idea of promotion
is held out pretty fairly and pretty constantly. The clergy-
man flatters himself that he would be more useful in a
certain sphere; the military man, that if he only had a chance
he could win battles, and have, like Nelson, a Gazette to
himself; the painter, musician, and author, ask why their
works are not appreciated as well as those of their fellows —
why they are not "hung on the line," or, after working for
many years, why they may not preach to the world from
the columns of the Times or the Quarterly Review, as from
those of the Little Pedlington Gazette. Perhaps we ought
to honour this kind of grumbling; we cannot have zeal
without it. Man is not yet an angel, and unless he takes
interest in what he does, what he does will not be worth
having. And, after all, a gentle continuous grumble is an

DISCONTENT AND GRUMBLING. 125

occupation to an active mind, and is not so very unpleasant
Let the grumbler keep himself within bounds, and we shall
be content to listen to him; for a man is always seen at his
best when mounted on a pyramid of his own wrongs. Even
poor little Hodge and Ginx's Baby tell their sombre stories
with a certain amount of pleasure to us when they feel that
the stagnant pool of their lives has been stirred by a good
grumble. But the boundless, constant grumbler is generally
a braggadocio, and too frequently a nuisance, who should
be preached at by a raw curate until he has confessed to
his weakness and done penance — of the silent sort — for his
wicked discontent

126 THE BETTER SELF.

. XII.

THE LUXURY OF WOE.

How is it that woman so often takes refuge in tears, and
assuages her grief with a good fit of crying, and man holds
it to be a shame to be seen to weep ? How is it, again — for
on some subjects we can put a century of questions — that
woman gains beauty by that which distorts the face, and
assumes a power by that which is held to be a weakness ?
How is it, again, that in theatres, where the business of
gaily dressed actors is to excite emotion and to practise
their powers upon our feelings, we men who go purposely to
see a tragedy, to be terrified, appalled, touched with tender
grief, yet deny ourselves the pleasure of weeping, and are
ashamed if the tears rise to our eyes ? We laugh as much
as we like, and crow like babies, or " guffaw " like baboons
at a silly, stupid farce; but we are ashamed, at least the
majority of us, at crying. And yet he who can feel joy or
merriment, and not grief, is but an imperfect being. Unless
he can run up and down the whole gamut of feeling, he is
little worth : he is an imperfect man. It is just as natural to

THE LUXURY OF WOE. 127

exhibit grief as to exhibit joy. But a long time ago poets
felt tears to be a weapon of woman only, and sentimental
poets have found it necessary to apologize for the soldier
who, bidding good-bye to the scenes of his childhood, "leans
upon his sword and wipes away a tear."

There can, however, be but little doubt that women
love tears much more than men, and this they do naturally,
and without calling for any aid from fashion. Madame de
Flahaut, writing of people in high life, says that "there are
certain women who have so explored the emotional that they
rather love to nurse a misery than to enjoy a tranquil situa-
tion;" and Dickens, writing of low life, has pictured, with
admirable fidelity, a certain Mrs. Gummidge, a " lone, lorn
widow," who is always weeping and referring to her lost
husband, and indulging in the luxury of woe. Of course,
such a woman only exhibits her selfishness; but such women
care little about thai. If they can only persuade the world
that they are patterns of constancy they are delighted, and in
doing so they at least gain a pleasing sensation of their own
trouble, of the enormity of their sorrow, and feel indeed a
singular pride in being so unhappy. It is very possible that
much of the feeling may at first be real; but time, which to
all natural people brings the gentle anodyne of forgetfulness,
has no effect upon them. They nurse their sorrow, and are
always ready to call up their wrongs in a manner which to
us seems unwise and unwomanly. When a woman is left

128 THE BETTER SELF.

a widow we all of us know that she has a sorrow greater
than a widower has. Unprotected, lonely, without the aid
she looks for, without the manly voice to cheer her, the
judgment to direct her, the strong, manly arm to help, and
the brave, open sense of man to put things right, and to face
the difficulties of a cruel world, — the woman must feel all
this. The better wife, and the better loved wife, she has
been, the greater will be her intensity of feeling; but it
should follow that the more she feels this, the less open expres-
sion ^she will give to it. The woman who is always referring t
to her loss, takes out of the world her payment and her
consolation for that loss. Whatever her station in this
world, she has duties to perform, and she should confine
her grief to her chamber, and seek her consolation from
Heaven. If she neglects these merely to keep herself for
ever in weeds, and continually to parade her grief before the
world, we may depend upon it that the world will doubt
her grief and question the source of those tears which are
so prominently and even theatrically kept flowing.

And truly the world has some reason to doubt. Very
few of us like sorrow, and some people think its exhibition
an impertinence. Montaigne was of this opinion. "I
neither like it in myself," says he, " nor admire it in others ;
and yet generally the world is pleased to honour it with a
particular esteem, endeavouring to make us believe that
wisdom, virtue, and conscience shroud themselves under

THE LUXURY OF WOE. 129

this grave and affected appearance." This may be so with
the French, who are fond of sentimental sorrow and tears,
but it certainly is not so with us, externally a graver, but
mentally a much merrier and more humorous people.
Tears also seem to be more easy and natural with Celtic
nations — indeed, with any who are easily excited to laughter,
and are subject to sudden fits of depression ; but that there
is always something conscientious or honourable in them,
our notions forbid us to think. With two grave and warlike
peoples, the Greeks and Romans ; with the Danes and the
Teutons; and especially so with the tribes of the North
American Indians, it was considered a mark of effeminacy
and worthlessness for a man to cry.

Moreover, it must be borne in mind that tears are as
a rule no great proof of deep feeling. Actually, they are
an expression of the subsidence of the extreme emotion ;
and this is very finely illustrated in Tennyson's plaintive
ballad, " Home they brought her warrior dead." The wife
is struck speechless, motionless, with sorrow; and the cry
is that she must weep or she will die, and at last the tears
are brought forth in this wise : —

n

Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee —

Like summer tempest came her tears —
' Sweet, my child, I live for thee !

1 11

Not only do physiologists know this well, but the poets,

K

130 THE BETTER SELF.

who know nature by intuition, have long since told it to
the world. " Light cares speak out ; the stronger ones are
dumb," says the Latin proverb, in a line of Catullus ; and
the poets feign that the miserable mother, Niobe, having
occasioned the anger of Apollo, had seven sons, and as
many daughters, slain by the arrows of the sun-god ; and
thereon, hardened by woes, a statue of despair, turned into
stone. " In a battle near Buda," says Montaigne, who is
determined that the Grecian mythology shall not alone
tell the sad stories, " a knight was particularly taken notice
of for his singularly gallant bearing in an encounter. He
was unknown, but performed great deeds of valour, and
was highly commended by all, and lamented when left
dead on the spot, but by none more than by a German
count, who was infinitely enamoured of so rare a valour.
The body was brought off, and the count, with the common
curiosity, came to view it ; and the armour was no sooner
taken off than he knew the dead man to be his own son —
a thing that added a second blow to the compassion of all
beholders ; he only, without uttering a word, or taking
away his eyes, stood fixedly contemplating the body, till,
the vehemence of sorrow having overcome his spirit, he
sank down stone dead to the ground."

This is a beautiful story, and it is simply told ; it speaks
of a grief far "too deep for tears," an emotion which
"whispered the o'er-fraught heart and bade it break," a

THE LUXURY OF WOE. 131

sorrow which was silent in its intense depth, and deep in
its silence. It is doubtful whether women often feel such
strong sorrow ; if they do, it of course kills them ; but
Nature seems to have given them a nervous system which,
being more easily acted upon, more readily relieves them.
Tears are at any rate to be looked on, not as proofs of very
deep, or rather of the deepest, grief, but as a gracious relief
from the killing intensity of such grief.

Some women can cry whenever they desire to do so,
and make use of tears as an engine of great power. But
Madame de Stael thinks, and wisely too, that "it is a
question, whether women are not wrong to work upon men
by their tears, and thus, as it were, to make strength the
slave of weakness ; " but she adds that " where they do
not fear to employ that means, they almost always succeed
— at least for a time."

Yet, surely it is only for a time that men are conquered
by weakness. That they do not care to see grief openly
expressed is a common fault — a fault owned by very brave
men, who, for the most part, are tender-hearted. When
grief is open and loud, half the men who witness it will
do all they can to assuage it, as beggars and certain rogues
well know, who train up children to drop a box of lucifer
matches, and then to cry at the loss. Eagerly the good-
natured citizen gives his penny to make good the wretched
stock-in-trade ; but he is not often thus to be taken in. A

132 THE BETTER SELF.

too easily crying woman, one who is always as ready to melt

as a lump of salt in a shower of rain or a ball of snow in

the sunshine, a sound man rightly detests. He thinks that,

although poets speak with rapture of the tear, and Lord

Byron writes —

" So bright the tear in Beauty's eye
Love half regrets to kiss it dry,"

it loses all its charm in frequent repetition. And that
kissing away of tears, too, a Briton would hold to be a very
simple folly and unmanly weakness, while a Frenchman
will rave at beauty's tears. " Cie//" cries Alphonse, " des
larmes!" And he cries himself, slaps his pale forehead,
and kisses away the salt drops as if they were nectar ; while
the English sailor, feeling just as and even more deeply than
the French lover, cries out that he should only "like to
catch his lee scuppers running over." This emotionalism
seems natural to the French. Madame de SeVigne', writing
to her daughter, describes the death of the hero, Marshal
Turenne, from an eye witness : " Shot down, the hero
opened two great eyes twice, and then his mouth, and
then shut them for ever. His captains round him cried
and wept, and the little d'Elboeuf threw himself on the
body in an agony of tears, and fainted with crying. . .
They carried the body to a coach, and then to his tent;
and it was there that M. de Lorges, M. de Roye, and many
others, thought that they would die with weeping." No

THE LUXURY OF WOE. 133

doubt the great man was beloved; but surely the silent
grief felt by English soldiers at the deaths of Sir Philip
Sidney, of Sir John Moore, and of Picton, is more to be
commended ; at any rate, it is more natural to us. To
the Americans, on the contrary — a great people, who seem
to have acquired much of the vivacity of the French, and
to adopt their fashions, as if they were impelled by climate
to be nearer to the Gaul than the Briton — that easiness of
crying, that fatal facility of tears, seems natural. When
Mr. (afterwards General) Sickles was tried for the murder
of his wife's suspected paramour, although there was neither
doubt on the part of the jury, nor denial on that of the
accused, he was acquitted by a jury so impressed by the
fervid and ad captandum eloquence of the counsel, that they
all burst into tears ; and the emotion was so catching, that
the reporters say there was not a dry eye in the court. This
may have been pity, but certainly it was not law. The
ancients, who forbade sensational appeals, and especially the
appearance of a woman in tears before the tribunal, were
quite right. In our courts, all one-sided expression of feeling
is rigidly forbidden. Justice should be calm, and blinded
with her bandage : certainly it is not graceful for her to be
seen with a tear in her eye.

The value or the worth of tears, then, has to be weighed,
as does everything in this world. We see that women shed
them more easily than men, and certain nations more easily

134 THE BETTER SELF.

than others. One man thinks it a proof of cowardice,
another a luxury, to indulge in woe. One man emotionally
excited even by wine will weakly pity himself till he is
" crying drunk ; " another, with a dull determination, will
speak of his wrongs without emotion, or with merely a
dumb grumble. Some women will use tears as an engine
of power, will weep over their sick cat, their lap-dog, their
bird, their own petty losses; others reserve their tears to
assuage deep griefs. As a rule, very soft hearts are, if one
goes a little further with them, very selfish hearts, and are
easily moved, as a shallow stream is easily rippled by the
wind; but they are not deep enough to be dangerous. Still,
there is a grief

" which burns

Worse than tears drown,"

says Shakspere ; and another of his characters says man-
fully, " Weep I cannot, but my heart bleeds." Ovid, who
has given us more axioms than most other poets, says
pointedly that tears, at times, have all the weight of words ;
yet, as a rule, a man had better look upon tears scientifically
— as a natural safety-valve given us to prevent any danger of
explosion. Give Grief words, let her speak loudly, and all
will be well. The silent sorrow kills. The baby who will
not cry chokes itself with its passion; he who bawls loudly
improves his lungs and grows stronger. Long before chloro-
form, or any of those anaesthetics which have been dis-

THE LUXURY OF WOE. 135

covered and given to the world, those pain-destroyers which
make the surgeon's art not half so dreadful as it was, the
doctors used to tell the men to cry out under the knife, for
Nature in this expression had given man a way out of his
pain, and an anodyne which some say is better than any
drug in the world. Thus one torment banishes another; and
thus God, mindful of man's weakness, gives him the tear
which heals his sorrow, while it softens his fellow's heart.

136 THE BETTER SELF.

XIII.

GRIEVANCES.

To over delicate feelings there naturally fall a number
of troubles duller persons usually escape — they are so
sensitive ; moreover, this is an age of grievances and of
strikes. We are each of us so badly off that our burdens
have worn quite " a hole in our back." There never was
an age half so badly used. Our fathers and mothers never
went through a quarter of our troubles. As for our grand-
fathers and grandmothers, they lived in a paradise of fine
gentlemen and ladies, balls, routs, drums, and all that
made life sweet. And really, if we look at the portraits
by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough, and mark the
placid faces and unruffled minds therein shown, we shall be
inclined to agree with the grumblers of the present day.

The world is full of unquiet souls. We are all something
like Blanche Amory in Mr. Thackeray's " Pendennis,"
who chronicles her woes in a little volume entitled " Mes
I^armes ! " and we exclaim with that affected young lady,

GRIEVANCES. iyj

"II faut avoir des ktnotions" So that, as an exquisitely
adjusted balance must swing evenly from one side to
another, we may presume that the soul of man, if it does
not break out in gratitude, will do so in complaint. No
class is free from this plague ; and really it would seem as if
our education had of late years omitted to instil endurance.
" Endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ " is
a text which has given way to the more worldly apophthegm,
" Grumble and get on." From the top of the tree to the
bottom, there is much the same cry : the private wishes to
be an officer, the subaltern a captain, the captain a general.
Perhaps there is not a class in the world so thoroughly
dissatisfied as military and naval officers. They thrive best,
of course, in war, and — small blame to them ! — are pleased
when men of peace are dismayed. It was a well-known
hackneyed toast at Indian mess-tables when John Company
held sway — " A bloody war or the yellow fever." Either
one or the other might carry off the colonel, the major, or
perhaps a senior captain or two. It is to be concluded that
young officers vociferously applauded; while the seniors,
who had weakened constitutions and had gained their
" steps," did not rap the table so heartily.

Let us " go downstairs " like Socrates, and see whether
we can meet with more wisdom. These young soldiers
have had their places won for them by their fathers' work,
and are thoughtless : still, they are generous enough to

138 THE BETTER SELF.

share both the war and the fever when they come; but
we shall find more wisdom with the workmen. They,
we know, have their grievances. They call themselves
"working-men," as if no one else worked. They have
Unions to protect them, and combine together under the
very shadow of the laws they too often set at defiance.
They have a congress at Sheffield ; and thereat, on Satur-
day, January 17th, 1874, they passed this resolution: —
"The Congress is clearly of opinion that the Imperial
revenues ought to be raised by direct levy on the annual
value of realized property." Was there ever a more
iniquitous proposal? A, a plasterer, saves his money and
buys a house or land, or puts his money in a bank; B,
a carpenter, earns twice as much, but does not save, and
spends all his income. A is to pay all the taxes, and B
none ! Or, to illustrate it in another way, C, a clergyman's
widow, lives on the savings of a lifetime : she has ^200 a
year. E, a literary Bohemian who has much talent, but
also much laziness, dawdles away half his time, managing,
however, to secure about treble the sum annually, which
he spends on himself, his club, cigars, and drink. But
the widow is to pay the taxes, and E to pay nothing ! Still,
we must not be too severe on our friends ; it is a great
step in their education that they own there should be an
" Imperial " system at all.

Victor Hugo, in his " Anne'e Terrible," a poem on the

GRIEVANCES. 139

year in which Paris was burnt, hits upon one of the reasons
of the grievances of the lowest classes. Going along the
street during the second terrible siege, the aged poet meets
with a Communist, who informs him that he has just set
fire to the National Library. " What ! " cries the poet ;
" Burn Homer and Plato and Socrates ; burn all the
historians and poets — those who have given men wider
hopes and better lives — those who have made discoveries
and perished for liberty ! What ! Burn Galileo and Newton
and Kepler, to whom the world owes science and so many
discoveries ! Burn those who make life merry and good
— burn Rabelais, Moliere, Lesage — burn Racine and
Shakspere — burn the preachers and moralists, and finally
burn the Bible itself ! Wretch, what have you done ! "
The man answers with a grin and an epigram, "Je ne sais
pas lire I" — "I don't know how to read!" What could
he know of the wide heritage of knowledge open to the
poorest scholar? It is ignorance, after all, that gives
point to our grievances and our grumblings. We complain
that we have missed that fortune, lost that suit, have been
made miserable by that failure. Did we know all, each of
these troubles might prove to be a blessing in disguise.
Wisdom and reflection will take the sharpest sting from
our troubles if we only employ them.

But, allowing that education will scatter and disperse,
as it has already done, many grievances, it must be first

i4o THE BETTER SELF.

conceded that the education needs to be religious and
moral. To give a selfish and corrupt heart more knowledge
is to give it more power to be mischievous. The small
scholars who learn the rights of men must also learn their
duties. The secularists who would banish such teachings
are not reformers — they are revolutionists. That Mr. Bright
has a grievance against England is very well known, but it
is not so well known why. He has also an immense
admiration for America; and he seems to regard most
things done by England as wrong, and most things done
or said against her as right The Ashantee war is barbarous
upon our part; and — hear this, ye who understand what
the native savage African is — a creature of low intellect,
used to surprises, stratagems, and lies all his life — Mr. Bright
seriously proposes that we should employ " arbitration — say,
as an arbitrator, the King of Holland " — between Ashantee
and England ! Well, we succeeded wonderfully in our
other arbitration — we had to pay three millions because we
believed a President's proclamation that certain American
States were belligerents. The Geneva Arbitration estab-
lished the fact that as yet States are not advanced enough
for such a method of settling international differences.
Does any one suppose that France and Germany would
have submitted their quarrel to arbitration? Would
America, in her quarrel with Spain about Cuba and the
"Virginius," be arbitrated for? Do Mr. Bright and others

GRIEVANCES, \\\

like him give unpalatable advice on purpose to quarrel
with those who will not accept it ?

As a general rule, we should advise persons to distrust,
utterly irrespective of political considerations, all those,
whether Tory, Whig, or Radical, who have a grievance
against their country or their family. If they are not well
there, they must be very unlucky, or they must be in
fault. If they are unlucky, we are worldly enough to
advise peaceable persons not to deal with them. And
what is one's country but one's family ? And, if we malign
that, what are we ?

" Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land ? "

Is there any Englishman who does not love his land, ay,
and trust her too ?

Then why malign her? With Mr. Arch travelling to
Canada (Britain's eldest daughter and best representative),
and telling English peasants what has been told them for
twenty years — that, in ten cases out of the dozen, they
are best off at home — with the experience of the Brazil
emigrants before us, and of Mr. Dickens, and the deadly
swamp he pictures in America — why should "our friends
with a grievance " always abuse England ? Why should
the working-men, whose masters and whose masters' fathers
are and were workers, talk about oppression, and that men

142 THE BETTER SELF.

cannot rise in this country? Why should these old lies
repainted have power to move our English folk? Simply
because lies will have power; they sift and stir men, and
the bad ones yield. Two men, very different, and of
different creeds, gave utterance to two opinions which
meant the same thing, and which it is well sometimes to
remember. Mr. Caleb Cushing is credited with formulating
in America the smart phrase, "Our country, right or wrong;"
and Lord Denbigh, as is well known, said, "An Englishman,
if you please ; but, before all things, a [Roman] Catholic"
Opposite as the expressions appear, they mean the same
thing : they mean loyalty to the ship one sails in — don't
scuttle that We agree to the spirit of them with our
whole heart. If one does not stick by one's home, one's
hearth, one's country, to whom will one be true? To
whom is one's tongue to be gracious, if it is constantly
exposing the weakness of one's own mother? For our-
selves, we are weak enough to be proud of being a Briton ;
and, if any one will find out that " brither Scot " who,
when in Canada, imported some of his native turf, a mat
for his feet, and a seat for his chair, and, sitting down,
drank real Glenlivat to the old land, and felt his heart
glow, because he was on his native soil, we will exchange
photographs and " embrace " as brothers.

The best excuse for the grumblers is to suppose that
they are out of health, and that the vile melancholia, or

GRIEVANCES. 143

black bile, of which old Burton has treated, is the source
of their ill-tempers. In perhaps eight cases out of ten, this
charitable supposition is the true one. In a young ladies'
school, superintended by one who knew a little of medicine,
the young people who were not quick and smart with their
lessons were stimulated with a dose of Gregory's powder —
this we know as a fact — and improved health produced
improved attention. It is well known, also, that John
Dryden, who sat down to write tragedies in his best dress,
prepared himself by a dose or so of medicine on the
previous day. Another writer attributed his atheistic and
discontented ideas to an undigested mutton chop. Putting
these things together, we may endeavour to banish some
of our grievances by keeping in sound health. We may
send others flying by being prudent and wise. Personally,
we seldom feel so bitterly ill-tempered as when we have
done a foolish' thing ; and others, no doubt, are like us.

Again, if we want to be successful and manly, and
pleasant in life, when we have a grievance we must treat it
as a weed, and pull it up. Great men do not have them.
" What a crying shame it was," said Hazlitt, " that Milton
got only thirteen pounds nine shillings and sixpence for
'Paradise Lost.' " " Not at all," answered Northcote ; " he
did not write it for money. He had gained what he pro-
posed by writing it^-not thirteen pounds nine shillings and
sixpence, but an immortal reputation." That answer of the

144 THE BETTER SELF.

great artist was a noble one. "They don't ask you out,"
said an acquaintance to Dr. Johnson, "these great lords
and ladies, like they do David Garrick." "No," said
Johnson ; " they don't like their mouths stopped, for they
are great lords and ladies; besides, Davie amuses them."
Here is the truth roughly told, but all the more poignant
When one can amuse in society, one can count upon being
popular, and upon being " asked out" Who dined out so
much as Sydney Smith, Tom Moore, and Theodore Hook ?
And why? Because they were the most brilliant men of
the day, and a dinner-party was not a success without them. '
Sydney Smith's widow kept away from society long after her
husband's death ; at last she ventured. " How different it
was ! " she writes. " I could not believe a dinner could
have been so dull."

Men and women, too, receive in this life much of what
they deserve. It is like a looking-glass, this big world ;
grin and smile to it, and it will smile back — scowl, and it
scowls. It is but a confession of one's own unpleasantness
at home if we air our grievances. The nice people are not
" nice " without a good deal of trouble on their part. That
pleasant fellow who always cheers his acquaintances, and
who carries an atmosphere of good nature about him, is
probably a hero in his way, and most likely a good-natured
philosopher, who takes a great deal of trouble to be what he
is. That amiable sister, who never complains, has shown

GRIEVANCES. 145

in little things as much bravery as if she had won the
Victoria Cross.

On the other hand, those young persons who have always
a budget of miseries to pour into the sympathetic ears of
their friends, and who are totally, if they are to be believed,
unappreciated at home, will be found, if looked into, not
so amiable as they might be. Mr. Tom Pinch, who never
thought of himself, found even the gross hypocrite Pecksniff
a good and kindly creature ; while Martin Chuzzlewit, who
took care to sit in the very front of the fire, and liked
to be read to sleep by Tom, discovered every one to be
selfish. Depend upon it, if we try to think more of others
than we do of ourselves, we shall seldom have a grievance.
We may also rest assured that, if we will dwell upon our
sweet selves, and our own merits, we shall doubtless believe
those merits to be so great that we shall find the world
will always supply an immense and ever-increasing griev-
ance by being blind to them.

H6 the better self.

XIV.
DELICATE FEELINGS.

Very sensitive persons are often very selfish, and very
selfish persons are not unfrequently quite blind to their
own defects. It is usual for them to deprecate any appeal
to or any attack upon their feelings, and they talk as if
many things done in life were done purposely to upset
the delicate organisation they refer to. Sometimes this
selfishness is very apparent, and the persons around are
satisfied that there is a good deal of latent hypocrisy, or
what the world succinctly terms humbug, conjoined to it
The reader will remember that the rogue Autolycus, in
the Winter's Tale, thus appeals to his delicate and noble
sensibility, in order merely to conceal for a time his
robbery ; for, after he has picked the clown's pocket as
he lies grovelling on the ground and pretending to be
wounded, he rejects any offer of money. " Dost lack any
money? I have a little money for thee," says the clown,
about to put his hand in his pocket But Autolycus at
once catches his hand and whines out, "No, good sweet

DELICA TE FEELINGS, 147

sir ; no, I beseech you, sir ; I have a kinsman not past
three quarters of a mile hence, unto whom I was going :
I shall there have money or anything I want. Offer me
no money, I pray you; that kills my heart." This appeal
to the finer feelings of the clown effectually blinds him,
and he does not discover his loss till the rogue has long
gone out of sight.

Similar cajolery is practised every day. There is hardly
a day passes but that one may see in the newspapers some
appeal to the benevolent, wherein it is stated that a lady
of high birth, an officer, or a clergyman, who dares not
make her or his case known, has fallen into misfortune,
and who desires to be relieved in a manner that will not
"kill the heart," i.e., hurt the feelings. By appealing to
the mercy and compassion of the world — and the world
has much more than many of us give it credit for — such
persons get frequent and sometimes munificent relief. The
Duke of Wellington, amongst his secret good deeds, which
were numerous, once relieved "an officer's daughter," as
she represented herself, for a series of five years. He made
inquiries, but, though he never saw the lady, the plot was
so cunningly laid that all suspicions were lulled, until at
length, just as he was about to send her five pounds, as
she said she was going into a hospital with a broken leg,
the mendicity officer, having got hold of one of the Duke's
letters, discovered that the " officer's daughter " was a man,

a v.TAct-*^\; Sccr.r.c-'i^i'r *ri:£r. To mhat extent the Duke
had >*cr. 7i"iAv.c\- ,1707. hi r^ver m-oci^d confess : but he
octcr. "iA^Siv. heArr.N a: rhe thcrcs^hness of the deception,
*i:hc;*/h he »"** vcn ATstTv *-.:>. the :ir.roaor at the time.

KoaV:v $v\v. And chAritA^c r«cor«e have work enough,

;f they Arc rich. for Ar. A":r.v.raer : And the public has need

indeed to protect :ts :^\:"..r,cs* And. to prevent the robbery

b\ routes, pixv- reasor. to sv.vrort a •• Charity Organisation B

as weU as a " Mcr.d-.N-::> Soe;ety." The feeling of pity, if

;nd«l$red ;nd;scr.;v:;r«Ate":y Ar.d "oosely. :> a very expensive

one to a jrcnero;:* r.wr.. Ar.vi miserably harmful to the

i\vip;en: of his charity. It i> a", very well to act the good

Samaritan, bat we who arc to'.d to be " wise as serpents "

as >\ ell as %1 harmless as dot cs." shou'd remember that the

original gwd Samaritan, when he found his neighbour

wounded and plundered, did not content himself with

dropping his twojvnce into the half-closed hand, but

Numd up the poor suiTcrers wounds, placed him on his

own bca>t, look him to a place oi refuge, and provided

Tor him till he was well. " Many persons who love to

indulge sentimental feelings only are," as Sydney Smith

said with a sneer, " very ready to act the good Samaritan,

but * without the oil and the twopence.' "'

There are some persons who indulge their feelings at
others* expense, and who pity the convict when convicted
and punished, quite putting out of sight the righteousness

DELICATE FEELINGS. 149

of his sentence and the enormity of his crime. We find
many of these philanthropists everywhere. Recently a
woman in America, to whom a brutal murder and many
other crimes were brought directly home, was acquitted
by a jury and dismissed with a compliment. In our own
country women who have made it their business to poison
families by wholesale, or to kill a dozen children at least
while carrying on a baby farm, have been pardoned — as
to the extreme sentence — and maintained comfortably for
life ; and even while we write, two gentlemen of extremely
liberal opinions — Mr. Jacob Bright and Mr. P. A. Taylor,
the latter a prominent advocate of women's rights — have
made themselves conspicuous by advocating the abolition
of the recently imposed Act which permits the flogging
in gaol of garotters and of all who use personal violence
in highway robbery. Of all assaults — on account of its
roughness, its brutality, its cruel results, and its cowardice
— that of the garotte, or strangulation on the highway, is
the most cruel, except perhaps that of deliberately kicking
one's prostrate antagonist to death with shoes armed with
tips purposely prepared. Its effect on the nerves is so
serious that very many of the victims have died, and very
many have been rendered invalids for life. One poor
man whom we knew died, and the state in which he was
brought home gave his wife such a shock, that she also
succumbed, leaving two helpless orphans. The only

i$o THE BETTER SELF.

effective way to lesson these assaults was found to be
the flogging of garotters under the superintendence of a
surgeon, who, if they could not bear the lash and fainted,
immediately stopped the punishment. But our philan-
thropists find the description even of such punishment
too much for their feelings, and plead for the subjects
of it : such treatment brutal ises them. Brutalises them,
forsooth ! As if a professional garotter, who watches a
poor man till he comes to a dark corner, and then twists
a gutta-percha switch round his throat, could be brutalised !
That the punishment is an effective deterrent is found in
the fact that upon the Act being passed such assaults fell
from forty in a season to four, and have since almost
stopped. It is not ten years ago since a City tradesman
invented a garotte collar — a steel apparatus with spikes,
to prevent the possibility of the wearer being choked;
yet now we find persons unwise enough to plead for the
perpetrators of such crimes. We of course respect pity,
sensibly and well directed, and above all we lament for
those who fall into crime ; but we must not allow pity,
any more than any other feeling, to befool us. Our duty
lies sometimes in the thorny and unpleasant path of severity,
not altogether to be exercised towards the criminal, but to
prevent others from being similarly misled through hope of
escape with impunity, which is the great incentive to crime.
Amongst the "feelings" which are too often indulged

DELICA TE FEELINGS. 1 5 1

in a foolish way are those which we rightly reckon amongst
the holiest in nature — those of a mother. As the sweetest
wines make the sharpest vinegar, and from the most brilliant
exotic flowers are distilled the most potent poisons, so our
best good often becomes our worst evil; and the foolish
indulgence of mothers — in nine cases out of ten for the
sake of mere selfishness, however cunningly concealed
from themselves — has perhaps done as much evil as any
other cause — some persons say as all other causes — in
the world. We remember that Mrs. Kenwigs, in Dickens's
story, assembled her children, all nicely dressed, on one
form for the admiration of her friends and gossips, and
then burst into tears to "relieve her feelings," declaring
that the little snub-nosed creatures were too beautiful to
live. By that cunning contrivance the lady called the
attention of her friends to her offspring, and so gratified
her vanity. The eldest child, Miss Morleena, tried, it will
also be remembered, the same "little game" on, with a
difference, by going into hysterics in the baby's chair ;
but, finding no one to attend to her "feelings," she at
once recovered, and made a violent assault on one of her
little sisters, as an outlet to other pent-up "feelings."
Here we may ask — unless we quietly console ourselves
by assuming the "feelings" of women to be often mere
vain expressions — how are we to account for the fact that
" hysterics," as they were called, were once a very fashion-

152 THE BETTER SELF.

able complaint, and that now they are seldom heard of?
So also with fainting fits, which are marvellously less
common, according to medical statistics, than they were
twenty years ago. Some part of the cessation may be
attributed to the smaller practice of tight-lacing, but a very
large percentage of the fainting fits must be put down to
the indulgence of " feelings."

Mothers who are always ready — as too many are — to
marry their daughters without forethought, to push forward
their sons recklessly, to get " any place " for their children,
and greedily to take the very best, suitable or not, for
their progeny, to secure the first place, the largest slice
of cake, and other "goodies," are merely carrying out a
distilled selfishness ; and while they believe that they are
exhibiting a mother's self-sacrifice, in reality they are
merely shifting their method of self-pleasing. Take again
the too common plea which mothers put forward for
indulging their children; self-love tells them that they
do this through the generosity born of true love, whereas
what they do arises as much from want of judgment and
discrimination as from due appreciation of justice. Again,
many a mother, instead of properly punishing a child at
the time of wrong-doing, refers all the unpleasant part of
domestic rule to the father, who thus becomes the domestic
tyrant, while the mother is looked upon as a pitying angel,
her soft folly undoing all the good which the father's pun-

DELICA TE FEELINGS. 1 53

ishment might do. So, yet again, mothers believe that
they are exhibiting the proper "maternal feelings" in
keeping their children at home when they should send
them forth into the world, where alone they can be
taught the virtue of self-dependence. As Tennyson writes,
in his Gareth and Lyriette, it is simply ruin for an active
young man to be checked by over-fondness —

" Prison'd and kept, and coax'd and whistled to —
' Since the good mother holds me still a child,
Good mother is bad mother unto me !
A worse were better ! "

The subject is an unpleasant one to us, and therefore we
will say no more. The worst of it is, that neither we nor
any one else will convince a foolish mother that, in pleasing
her own selfishness, and in ruining her children, she is not
doing her best, but rather her worst ; and if such a woman
reads this, she will perhaps think the writer " a hard-hearted
monster " for having dared to say what he has said.

We have heard a man described as a gentleman because
his "feelings" would not permit him to carry a parcel,
nor to work for his living, nor to pay his debts ; the pride
which suggested to him the propriety of being very well
dressed, wearing nicely made kid gloves, and a well-
brushed hat, was left out of sight. Mr. Mantalini was a
gentleman of this sort ; and there are ladies too who are
content to starve and live but half a life throughout life,

154 THE BETTER SELF.

so that they never do anything menial. Lord Salisbury,
the other day, referred to this feeling when he assured
his hearers that, because ladies would not enter into
lower spheres, the clerk and the curate, the companion
and the governess, have come to be paid much less
than the skilled working-man, the mason who builds the
wall or lays the coping, or the housekeeper who looks
after one's household, and the cook who prepares one's
dinner. Lord Salisbury is one who speaks with great
authority, for he has himself for many years put his
" feelings " very wisely in his pocket, and has shown us
what such a nobleman should show us. Instead * of idling
luxuriously beneath the shadow of a grand title, this
descendant 6f William Longswood, Earl of Salisbury, a
great warrior, and in our heraldry "a high and mighty
prince," has been serving on railway boards, proving himself
a most efficient chairman, so that any great board would be
happy to bow to his decision, and by a very high salary
willingly secure his services. For such a long-descended
nobleman, of as good birth as is the Queen herself, such
service is as menial as for one true gentlewoman to manage
the household of another. But of this we will say no more.
Upon the new continents where our children and cousins
will move more freely than we do, let us hope that honest
work will be truly honoured, and that the "professions"
will not be so much elevated above righteous trade.

DELICATE FEELINGS. 15S

It is a question whether feelings are natural ; that is,
whether they arise spontaneously or are received. " We trust
we have a good conscience in all things," says the apostle,
with that marvellous spiritual prescience which anticipates the
knowledge of the most learned. As Sterne has remarked
in one of his curious and spasmodic sermons, the phrase is
noticeable. " We trust ; surely we know ? Nay, hardly so."
A certain conscience perhaps is inherent; but the conscience
of the African who would lie and steal from and poison the
most affectionate of his pastors who had converted him, is
a very different monitor from the conscience of that good
missionary.

The greatest argument in respect of the inherence of
our feelings may be found perhaps by reference to the lower
creation. Take, for instance, fear, which is a nervous
feeling so general all over the world that we cannot doubt
but that it is inherent. What we call courage is but an
absence of fear, and the greatest "braves" among the
beasts are at the same time the most cowardly.

" That all men would be cowards if they dare,
Some men have had the courage to declare."

Courage, friendship, tenderness, maternal affection, revenge,
anger, hatred, and other feelings may be traced in the
behaviour of animals. Elephants remember injuries and
benefits, and will resent the one and reward the other.

156 THE BETTER SELF.

Horses and cats form attachments ; and of course dogs are
not without their feelings. It is observable that no dog
likes to be laughed at ; that he will show anger, remorse,
and a great nervous disturbance if pointed at and ridiculed,
and this without mentioning his name. If the name be
spoken, of course his quick ear catches it : and it is not
unnatural in the dog that he should watch and mark the
various tones in which his conduct is debated ; thus the
wise cur in the comedy, which walked downstairs to avoid
being kicked down, is quite true to life, and any one may
see that when a dog is looked at and laughed at he is not
insensible to ridicule. Neither is he insensible to praise,
nor in some measure to humour. And certainly what a dog
feels a man feels. We can all agree with evolution so far,
and we may each determine to spare the feelings of others
when we can, and not indulge in them in too great an
abundance ourselves. One of the most unpleasant persons
in a family is the one we do not know what to do with on
account of the overplus of " feeling " she possesses.

( 157 )

XV.

THE PROPER TOUCH.

What is most wanted by all of us at home and abroad, but
perhaps most of all at home, is tact. The most skilful man
will feel at times that he wants it, and the most persuasive
will, by a moment's forgetfulness, lose a year's hard work.

This is an old story. Here is an old illustration. King
Radbod was a most excellent Dane, and of an enthusiastic
temper; so that whatever he did, he carried with him his
Court and his nobles — and it is needless to say his people.
St Vulfran, who had been sent from the Bishop of Rome,
had got a footing in that Court, had converted many of the
nobles, and had so far touched the king that he consented
to be baptized. Upon a day appointed, therefore, the good
saint prepared the font, and the king marched into the little
church, with its communion table (for they did not dream of
altars in those days of primitive honesty and simplicity), and
surrounded by as many courtiers as could well squeeze in,
he was received with a jubilant hymn by St. Vulfran and his
missionary friars.

158 THE BETTER SELF.

The king, depositing his crown in the hands of his
attendants, put one foot in the font, and was about to
accept the holy chrism, when he paused : he had a question
to ask, and a loyal question too. " Vulfran," said he, " what
do you say has become of that long line of ancestors of
mine who ruled in this land before you came with your
Gospel tidings, and who were never baptized ? " Vulfran,
a strict believer in regeneration — at that time, indeed, never
disputed nor mooted — answered hastily : "Assure yourself of
this, Radbod, that those unbaptized kings were not Christians,
and are most certainly damned."

Whereupon King Radbod drew his foot out of the font,
and placing his crown upon his head, girded on his sword,
and proudly swept away, saying : " For my part I would
rather be damned with a long line of kings and warriors,
than be saved with a few poor snivelling, shaveling monks."
His courtiers withdrew with him. Vulfran was left with his
fratres singing a hymn, and begging for help ; and that
kingdom and its dependencies, its people and its neighbours,
were lost for long years to Christianity, and therefore to
light, civilization, piteousness, good faith, mercy to the poor,
and all its attendant blessings. It was like putting back
the sun; for, sooner or later, all lands must come under
this forerunner of light and knowledge.

Now what lost Vulfran this kingdom was not truth, for
it is not true that those who have not heard of Christ are

THE PROPER TOUCH. 159

damned ; nay, it is utterly contrary to the spirit of the
Gospel, and is false. That by which he lost King Radbod
has cost the Church thousands of souls, — want of tact ; and
this want is, by anticipation, condemned by the great Head
of the Church Himself when He says, " Be ye therefore
wise as serpents, and harmless as doves : " and perhaps want
of tact has been more harmful to religion than anything
else. People who believe that they are in possession of the
actual truth, are not to be excused if they make that truth
unattractive to those who have not arrived at their stand-
point : even St. Paul rightly prides himself on his tact He
was all things to all men : not that he was a hypocrite, or
ever shunned the truth or feared to declare it ; but he was a
many-sided man. He felt where other men felt; he put
himself in their place ; in a word, he knew the proper
touch; and he knew the value of it

And what is tact ? It is a little and important word,
from the Latin tangere, to touch. It means a delicacy of
perception, a knowledge of when a fact is arrived at A
good scholar derives the word from the French tadique,
Italian tattica, and the Greek laK-nK^ tugou, I place in
order; which seems to us to apply more to the word
" tactics " and its meaning, than to tact Richardson says
that " tact is a modern word, frequent in conversation," and
quoting Lord Macaulay's words, defines it as "skill or
adroitness in adapting (one's self) to circumstances, and our

160 THE BETTER SELF.

words to our deeds." It is all this, and a great deal more.
It is the art of putting things adroitly. With tact you may
with impunity tell the most sensitive person of the most
terrible misfortune; without tact, such an announcement
would knock the same person down, as a bullock is felled
by a pole-axe. With tact a man makes a request for a
favour, for a loan of money, for a place for his son, his
daughter or his nephew, begs his son-in-law into a living or
himself into a bishopric, and does all or any of these things
with such absolute delicacy that he either succeeds, or makes
the act of denial painful to him who performs it ; without
tact he muddles everything, he even begs the girl who loves
him for her hand at the wrong time. He is always out of
season. He makes a joke when people are exhausted with
laughter; he ventures upon a melancholy remark just as
people are tired of sadness and longing to laugh. He is
the person whom Sydney Smith pictures as being himself
square, and yet being always thrust into round holes. " We
shall generally find in life," writes Sydney Smith, and it will
be interesting to put this famous but rarely traced quotation
rightly before the reader, " that the triangular person has
got in the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a
square person has squeezed himself in the round hole. The
officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom
fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for
each other. "

THE PROPER TOUCH. 161

When we can say so, we may be assured that we have
met a person of much tact, and of course of considerable
knowledge : for tact consists as much in Art as in Heart, in
a sensitive good nature, much perception, quickness, vivacity,
and receptivity. To know what to say, and how and when
to say it, argues a very considerable grasp of mind. To say
the wrong thing, and to remember the right thing at the
wrong time, is a fault of so general a character, that not only
have Aunt Tabitha Bramble, Mrs. Nickleby, and a dozen
other characters been built upon it, but in Punch Mr.
Burnand has been carrying on a series of comic papers
entirely on this theme, and these papers have grown into a
volume which has gone into many editions. The fun of
these " Happy Thoughts " consists in a dull and small-
minded fellow's having what he considers happy thoughts
always too late for use, simply because he wants mental
quickness and tact. He always gets the worst in an argu-
ment or in a single combat of badinage or chaff; he recol-
lects the cutting rejoinder he ought to have made when it is
five minutes too late. Happy thoughts of this sort are as
useless as those

" words congeal' d in Northern air,"

which Butler tells us of in " Hudibras " : a vulgar notion,
said to be prevalent in his time, that in Greenland words
were frozen in their utterance ; and upon a thaw, as Chester-
field has it, "a very mixed and utterly incomprehensible

M

i62 THE BETTER SELF.

speech was heard in the air of all those words set at liberty."
But of what use was the speech when there was nobody to
hear it ?

There are many persons born with tact, and many a
child in years will prove that he has a very excellent and
delicate perception. There are a dozen anecdotes to prove
this ; but the contrary is the rule. Young people are often
sadly wanting in tact, and are perpetually saying rude things.
They are the Enfans Terribles of Gavarni, who always blurt
out unseasonable, and sometimes most cruel sayings, one of
the mildest of which is the reply to the grandfather who,
patting a favourite grandson's head, says, "Ah, my good
little boy, there will be something nice for you when I die."
" Then I wish you'd die at once, grandpa." Old as a man
may be, he does not like to be at once sent down into the
damp earth —

" To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod."

Even from the innocent mouths of babes and sucklings,
loveable as they are, and much to be indulged, we do not
like to hear such matter. How many a hatred has had its
incipience and foundation in a sharp turn given by a child's
prattle?

The tactics of life — by which we fight life's battle — are by
for the most important By them we measure our relative

THE PROPER TOUCH. 163

strength, and conquer or fall. We set out, arrange, and put
in order what we can do and what we can't do. A tactician
must be a good mathematician ; he knows how to calculate
distance, strains, and curves, the weight of the burden and
the strength of the beam. If he is a wise man he never
enters a battle without knowing it beforehand to be won. It
was said of the Duke of Wellington that months before the
Battle of Waterloo he had picked out the field of Mont St.
Jean and its neighbourhood as the place where the battle
would be fought. Certain events would force Napoleon to
move upwards to the north of Europe ; certain others would
incline his steps that way; he would meet him there. He
did meet him at the very spot, waited, pretended to be
caught at the Duchess of Richmond's ball all the time his
troops were taking up their position, hurried to their head
just in time, and fought till the very last moment — hours
after the appointed and proper time — till Bliicher and night
came. An immense issue hung upon the forecast and the
tactics of the duke ; but, as he himself said, a good general
chooses his own battle field. So it has been with all the
great generals in the world, from the young Alexander to
Marlborough, who was, perhaps, the finest general the world
has seen since the Macedonian conqueror, and whose tactics
were so admirable that he never had to fight a battle twice.
His opponents were always indisputably beaten and utterly
scattered by the measures he had taken beforehand.

164 THE BETTER SELF.

Both in tact and tactics a man may overstep himself. In
the former, it does not so much matter ; it is simply like
playing with oneself for a guinea, and winning it. Some
persons use tact where it is not wanted, and then it becomes
finesse, and ceases to be tact ; some, too, artfully go beyond
it, on purpose to come back gracefully, like the beau, who
always re-entered the room on pretence of having left some-
thing, so that he might have an opportunity of again giving
his most graceful bow. The Irish are great adepts at this,
and say a dozen pretty things which apparently begin with
rudeness : " I am so ill, Kathleen, that I am nearly dead."
" And indeed I wish you were quite, my lady ; for sure, if
the body was dead, your soul would be sitting with the
angels ! " The surprise which such a compliment gives is
pleasant even to the strongest intellect This species of
compliment is perhaps " blarney," but it goes a great way
for all that If the Irish were as stable as they are versatile
and clever, we should not be troubling ourselves so much as
we always are about that unhappy island. It is true that
Mr. Huxley declares the English and Irish all to be of the
same breed ; the natives of Tipperary to be as Teutonic as
the natives of Devonshire. If so, the difference must lie in
the climate of the two islands ; for certainly, for quickness
and tact, the Irishman will beat the ordinary Englishman
hollow.

It follows, then, that tact is not everything, but it is much.

THE PROPER TOUCH. 165

It is that which gives a man a good start in life : it serves
him at every pinch, places him forward in life, puts his most
pleasing characteristics in the best light, and keeps his
follies and defects in the background. In homely phrase,
it teaches a man to put his best leg foremost It may not
be a very noble quality, since in fact it often saves people
from the necessity of using noble qualities ; but it is a useful
one, and must be possessed by those who have their way to
make in the world. The want of it will ruin many a good
man, and has ruined thousands. Tact may be born with a
man, but it may also be acquired. We generally manage to
please those whom we wish to please; and watchfulness,
attention, and good nature, properly applied, will, sooner or
later, produce tact.

166 THE BETTER SELF.

XVI.

LOOKING FORWARD.

Amongst the many good things which this age seems to be
losing, one of the chief is Hope. This is not to be won-
dered at ; it is a phenomenon which takes place every now
and then. Men's hearts become as water, and fail at such
junctures. The world has seen a political deluge; the old
has been torn up and swept away, and the new is not yet
formed. Society in the meantime can but look on, like
Mr. Micawber, and wait for what will next " turn up. n But
sad experience does not give it the hopefulness which was
Micawber's chief characteristic. In his worst fortunes that
gentleman was ready to believe in any brilliant revolution
of his fate. He was ever prepared for the best, not for
the worst He would not have been surprised if an uncle,
of whom he had never heard, had left him a fortune of
half a million or so, or if the Lord Chancellor had given
him a sinecure worth a few thousands a-year. This hope-
fulness is one of the charms of the character. A man who
lives in the delightful expectation of "something turning

LOOKING FORWARD. 167

up " should be as happy as a child It is the want of hope
that kills us, the illusions that keep us alive : —

" Bring these once more, and set me yet again
In the possession of Life's gramerie.
I was not happy ; but I knew not then
That happy I was never doom'd to be."

While there is life there is hope : that is the sentence which
cheers us all. No one thanks the prosaic man who is ready
to prove that there is no ground for so pleasant an illusion,
and that as yesterday was, so to-morrow will be, a day of
struggle, trouble, and terrible sameness to ninety-nine out
of every hundred now living in the world.

And perhaps one could not do better than to cultivate
Hope largely. Both men and nations could do so, though
the habit may and does grow out of fashion.

But the wisest men in the vivacious French nation,
which plays so large a part in European matters, seem to
have, for a time, passed under Dante's gate, upon which was
written, "All hope abandon ye who enter here;" and others
not less wise predict a gradual decline of the Latin races.
Even the ever hopeful M. Thiers could not comfort them.

A very hopeless walk is that which is all down hill, —
from bad to worse ; and yet England, no less than France,
is said to have entered upon it. We have ceased, it is said,
to grow. Certainly our statesmen seem to be content to
keep things as they are, and are ready to negative any

168 THE BETTER SELF.

proposition which will call forth the vigour of the nation
and cost money. Thus two friends and old enemies,
England and France, the one degenerating, the other
destroyed, defeated, and burdened with debt, seem to be
in a hopeless condition. Philosophical Germans have,
indeed, lately pictured England as falling to pieces, unable
to govern, a prey to demagogues and uninstructed working
classes, who are ready to sacrifice everything to Trades
Unions, and guided by statesmen who are too old and too
dull to see what they ought to do, or too cowardly to
do it

On the other hand, the regeneration of France seems to
many a reflective Frenchman impossible. The peasantry,
that stay of every nation, that broad base of all prosperity,
are hastening to destruction. Goldsmith had doubtless such
a picture in view when he said, —

" Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made ;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied."

"The peasantry," says M. Gabriel Monod, in his recent
experiences of a campaign on the Loire, " are brutally
ignorant, and even when intelligent, shamefully demoralized,
and scandalously profligate and wicked. Their behaviour
was the most lamentable of all the lamentable spectacles in
this unhappy struggle." It is among them " that the results

LOOKING FORWARD. 169

of ignorance and selfishness have exhibited themselves in
the most striking manner. They were too selfish to make
the least sacrifice for the soldiery, — utterly vile ; their state
of demoralization was frightful."

As the French peasantry, taught by French priests, have
been held up to us by Archbishop Manning as models of
virtue, while England has been said by the same authority
to be " a land of darkness and sin," this simple statement
surprises us. But M. Monod (and it is impossible to doubt
the sincerity of this gentleman's convictions, and every one
should read his paper in Frazet^s Magazine) beholds also
" the utter disorganization of French society, — a disorgan-
ization the present disasters in Paris are fast converting into
ruin." Whereat "the shopkeepers and idlers laugh and
stare," visit the ruins, idle about the sights, crowd to the
opened theatres, and, in fact, "fiddle while Rome is
burning." "In my distress," continues the writer, "I ask
myself, Whence are we to look for safety and regeneration ?
Can it be that this great nation, which has done so much for
civilization and the world, is destined to end by pointing the
moral of her own ruin ?"

We may well pardon M. Monod for his hopelessness.
M. Dumas, the younger, who has written an admirable
letter to his countrymen, telling them " not to go looking
for a man, but to be the men themselves," seems to be
almost as hopeless as M. Monod. " If you do not reform,"

170 THE BETTER SELF.

he says, " if you continue to nurse yourselves upon lying
newspapers, lying novels, political lies, and shams of all
sorts, farewell to you ! — the deluge is upon you 1 As for
us, we will look out of the ark to see you drown."

Take these outlooks, then, couple them with the im-
becility of our governing classes, who do not know how to
say " no," and who let Hyde Park be trampled to pieces by
a set of roughs, — who, to say the least, have no more
business there with a political meeting than in St Paul's
Cathedral, — statesmen who waver from one side to the
other, who raise more taxes, but do not try td make our
army larger or more efficient, — and we shall find abundant
cause to make the good men of the nations mourn : but
there is no reason for either people to be hopeless. In the
darkness the stars are best seen : in trouble and distress the
beauty of Hope shines with its purest, steadiest lustre. It
deserves to be what it is, — the centre star in the crown
of religion. There it burns — its effulgence is lighted by
God himself; and let us remember that there is not one of
His saints in the long history of the world but has worn
this crown, Faith, Hope, and Charity, — faith in goodness
and in God, hope for His ultimate triumph over evil, and
the loveliest love of all, sweet charity toward all men.

There are times in the life of a nation and in the life of
man when want of hope is natural. In the Civil War of
Charles the First, Lord Falkland, one of the most admirable

LOOKING FORWARD. 171

characters on either side, exhibited the deepest melancholy,
and may be said to have died of regret for his country's
disunion. Before the war Cromwell himself, and other
patriotic men, regarding the country as hopelessly involved
and under an irresponsible despot, were ready to leave it
During the French Revolution many of the best men of the
Girondins committed suicide, as men utterly hopeless of
their country's welfare. The same feeling was observed
when the great Republic of Rome fell under the power of
the ambitious men who prepared the way for Imperialism.
At present, men of thought and culture in France have a
grave cause to be hopeless. There seems but little prospect
of regeneration. Republicanism, Bourbonism and another
attack upon Rome, or the domination of the army and the
return of Bonapartism, are the three paths immediately
before the nation, although for a moment blocked by
a Presidential term of years ! Each path is beset with
difficulty. A firm adherence to the policy of disarmament,
retrenchment, and that peace and quietude which can alone
restore the nation, is the last thing upon the programme of
any party. So in life and health, man reaches a certain
state of fortune or state of body in which he can pursue his
course no longer. In the slang of the day, he is " going to
the bad," — his state is hopeless. At such a crisis he may be
saved by bankruptcy, or by some dreadful illness. Should
he abandon hope, he dies. It is not hard work that kills a

172 THE BETTER SELF.

man ; it is the hopeless nature of his work, his non-success.
This is always felt when a man has to struggle against a load
of debt, and is well-defined as " whipping-up a dead horse."

He who abandons hope hurries on to the climax; he
looks upon the dark side of the shield ; and however bad
our fortune or health may be, there are always two sides.
He does not injure others, .perhaps ; but he lames and
cramps himself. It may be that his want of hope is owing
to physical causes ; but he will do well to combat them in
every possible way. He should remember, too, that Hope,
like Faith, can build upon very little ; it is like many other
virtues, and becomes none at all if it requires to be founded
on a certainty. It often defers only a disappointment ; its
fruition is, perhaps, never so enjoyable as it was painted.
Expectation is almost always much better than the reality ;
but what of that? The superiority that hopeful people
show over the despondent, is, that they are sustained during
their trials, and that they may realize what they wish for.
While the despondent man plods on his miry ways in sleet
and rain, the hopeful one gaily takes his walks in sunshine.
There is the same difference between the Optimist and the
Pessimist

Both reach the same end ; and both, no doubt, will be
able to ascertain the great secret; but during the journey the
hopeful man and the Optimist get the best of it by a long
way. The desponding, despairing nature that fears every-

LOOKING FORWARD. 173

thing, may wake up to what it fears. As a rule, it does
not do so ; for as nothing is rarely so bright as was hoped
for, so nothing is so dark as we had feared. In addition to
the trouble when it comes, the desponding heart has had
the miserable employment of going out and meeting the
trouble on its long, melancholy journey.

The despondent ones are too fond of saying that hopeful
people owe all to their sanguine complexion and condition
of health. It is so easy, they assert, for Jones to be hopeful;
it is natural to him. Nothing can be less true. To most
men hopefulness is a virtue, because it is a task and a duty;
it is not everybody who looks at the world with rose-
coloured spectacles. A wise man must know that as yester-
day was, so will to-day be, and that to-morrow will succeed,
and other morrows after that, bearing with them the same
trivial round of common wants and common duties, without
any unusual or bright ray. But he does not on that account
bate one jot of hope, but " still bears up and steers right
onward."

So in the dead waste and middle of the night of our
political existence, France and England may cherish great
hopes. Now is the time for great men to be born, and for
young men to grow abhorrent of time-serving and servility to
the mob, of lassitude and letting things slide, and to raise
themselves to what they would call a better form. We
cannot yet pull our feet out of the Slough of Despond, but

174 THE BETTER SELF.

we may be sure that time will bring about a reaction.
History teaches us that it will be so. For a long time
General Paoli struggled for the freedom of Corsica. It is
but a little island, almost equally cut off from Italy and
France, and at times subjugated by one or the other when
wanted as a depot or a resort France hag used this island
with especial cruelty; but, says a French historian, "the
very same year in which the patriots were put down by our
arms, Corsica gave birth to one whom its conquerors were
soon to acknowledge as their master." Napoleon was born
at Ajaccio on the 15th of August, 1769, just two months
after the French conquest of that island His youth, spent
some part in friendship with, and almost wholly in a general
study of, the ancient love of freedom and Spartan simplicity
of Paoli, was but a preparation for that ambitious career
which raised France above the level of European nations,
and his native island to the same rank as an integral portion
of the Empire.

As History, while showing us that there are many dis-
creditable failures and miserable declensions, proves to us
that there is along with these a constant tendency in civiliza-
tion at once to recover and to raise men to higher levels,
as that poetic thought is also true which sings unfalteringly —

. " Freedom's battle once begun,

Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won, — "

LOOKING FORWARD. 175

so there is with individual man constant room for hope.
Poets have written on the pleasures of hope, and moralists
have been very general in praising and in blaming it.
" Hope," says Haliburton, " is a pleasant acquaintance, but
an unsafe friend. Hope is not the man for your banker; but
he may do very well for a travelling companion."

It is the best travelling companion in the world, and
certainly no bad banker, if you do not draw on him too
much. We all do very badly without it, for distance will
lend no enchantment to the view if our companion is one of
those prosaic people who assure us that all is barren from
Dan to Beersheba. A certain bravery, an elevation of
spirit, and constancy of mind are the concomitants of Hope.
It is a noble virtue, and has its roots or its basis in faith. It
reacts upon a man's self, purifies him and upholds him in his
trials, and gives him strength to bear them. It is unfair to
call it delusive, since delusive hopes are generally foolishly
founded, and sinful or harmful in their indulgence. That
hope only is righteous which has a basis of reason. When
we are ready to cry with that most prosaic Glover, whom it
is delightful to quote because nobody else will cite him, —

" Oh Hope, sweet flatterer, whose delusive touch
Sheds on afflicted minds the balm of comfort,"

we may be sure that we have been indulging, not our manly
and reasonable, but our extravagant and romantic feelings.

176 THE BETTER SELF.

It is quite true that " from the lowest depths there is a path
to the loftiest height;" but it is a bad way to get there if
we willingly make the descent There is great wisdom in
indulging in moderate hopes, which will add wings to our
courage and energy to our wills. True hope is indeed a
vigorous principle, and there has been no great man or
woman but has had recourse to it Cowley calls it "the
sick man's health, the lover's victory, the poor man's wealth; "
and it is indeed valuable as all these; but it is yet more, —
it is the brave and wise man's consolation and staff of sup-
port; always to be retained while there is life, — never to be
abandoned, even in death.

( 177 )

XVII.

GOOD NATURE, TEMPER, AND HUMOUR.

Whether out modern destructive philosopher will succeed
in persuading that lofty animal called man that he is no.
better than he should be, and that, instead of being "a little
lower than the angels," he is only a very little higher than a
beast, is a question; but in his latest book, on the "Expres-
sion of the Emotions," he has produced several facts to
prove that which we already know — namely, that animals
exhibit good temper and bad temper, and are subject to
various humours, and are of a bad or good nature as the
case may be. Some of these expressions of the emotions
are almost identical in either case, good or bad. Thus a
cat, when pleased, will gently wave its erected tail — and Mr.
Darwin is very learned as to the nerve force and proper
muscles brought into play for erection : but in other speci-
mens of the feline genus, such as the lion — Felis leo — gentle
wagging of the tail is an expression of fury. In placing
man — who has been defined as the only animal that laughs—
on the same plane as the dog, Mr. Darwin roundly asserts

N

178 THE BETTER SELF.

that dogs laugh. So they do in nursery legends; but,
though a great lover of dogs, and very observant of their
expressions, we can hardly accept the fact even when
supported by some lines from Somerville. " A pleasurable
and excited state of mind," says Darwin, "is exhibited by
some dogs by grinning. This was noticed long ago by
Somerville, who says —

" ' And with a courtly grin the fawning hound
Salutes thee cow'ring, his wide op'ning nose
Upward he curls, and his large sloe-black eyes
Melt in soft blandishments and humble joy.' "

This no doubt is correct as to the eyes ; but as to the grin
we cannot agree — as also the "sniff" that Sir Charles Bell
heard, "which resembles laughter." The good temper and
good nature of dogs and of all animals are patent to all, but
for His own good purpose, God has differentiated then-
expression, or, to use Mr. Darwin's method, they have not
yet acquired our habit of smiling, not " even to the slight
eversion of their lips, the grin and the sniff " which Sir Charles
Bell found in them.

Until, then, our philosophers shall have given us some-
thing more tangible than mere bald assertions unsupported
by satisfactory evidence, we shall believe that man is the
only animal which smiles and laughs — but not the only one,
perhaps, which weeps. To him a wider expanse of power is
vouchsafed, with muscles to unclose the lachrymatory ducts

••••..■• -.. :

GOOD NATURE, TEMPER, AND HUMOUR. 179

and to pucker the good-humoured wrinkles round the eye,
as well as make the mouth curve itself into varied form and
to "laugh mortal" when its owner is tickled with pleasure.

What is it, this important element of life — this that carries
so overwhelming a majority that it is as nine to one ? The
three qualities which we have chosen for the subject of this
essay are very different Good nature arises from race,
blood, breeding; is inheritable, and depends more upon
one's parents than upon one's self. It is also somewhat
subject to geographical conditions, and takes much of its
substance from the air we breathe and the land we inhabit.
It is an affair of race. The mild Hindoo and the self-satis-
fied but "heathen Chinee, " are good-natured, placid creatures,
as one may see from every line of their calm countenances,
although beneath that placid surface there are a host of
angry passions, forceful and cruel as history has often borne
witness. The Russian, Dacian, or Roumanian, the Italian,
Spanish, and Celtic peoples, are by no means so good-natured,
although they may be, and frequently are sweet-tempered.
As a rule, nations dwelling in deeply wooded and remote
countries, far from civilization and the business of the much-
peopled world, are, if good-tempered, melancholy and sad,
and subject to fits of dejection, delighting in gloomy subjects,
both in poetry and in art

We have an instance of a lower sense of good nature —
often mentioned as appertaining to a man and almost

180 THE BETTER SELF.

inseparable from him, but looked upon as a rather easy
indulgence — in the case of Charles II., who would even
permit his courtiers to break unseemly jests upon him ;
yet the countenance of Charles, as his portraits attest, is
saturnine, and no doubt his natural state was melancholy,
broken only by a sensual indulgence and love of pleasure.
His good nature will, if studied, resolve itself into a love
of ease, a sort of laissez-faire temper, into which his many
adventures, his trials, and the temper of the times had
schooled him. So long as he was at his ease he cared
little, and was good-natured enough to let his own servants
rob him of his fine clothes and the linen of his wardrobe;
on the other hand, his Majesty withheld his servants' wages,
and lost the money to his courtiers at the gambling table.
A strong sense of justice prevents this sort of good nature —
which, in fact, is no good nature at all, but is only to be
put down to an easy temper, ready to indulge itself, and
therefore not very severe on the little sins of others. There
are instances, however, which most readers will call to mind,
in which the easy-tempered Charles II. showed himself not
only cruel but bitterly revengeful.

Temper has reference to the mind, but mostly arises
from the condition of the body. An invalid is not generally
in a good temper — in fact, to be irritable and peevish is
the natural condition of the sick, and one in which most
persons who, after some years of health, find themselves

GOOD NATURE, TEMPER, AND HUMOUR. 181

reduced to ill-health, have to condole with themselves.
For temper depends naturally on the constitution; and an
irritable man, who may really be of a sweet good nature,
will often bitterly blame himself for letting sudden gusts
of bad temper overcome him, possibly at the very time he
wishes to be agreeable and amiable. But even here " sweet
are the uses of adversity" — he learns how weak a thing
man's will is unless directed by a greater will, which is the
very lesson he ought to learn. On the other hand, we
have plenty of instances in which we can admire the
governance of temper which some men have possessed.
Robert Hall, the author of the " Essay on Infidelity," being
troubled with an acute disease which sometimes caused him
to roll on the floor with agony, would rise therefrom, wiping
from his brow the drops of sweat which the pain had caused,
and, trembling from the conflict, ask, " But I did not com-
plain — I did not cry out much, did I ? "

A greater man than Robert Hall, Doctor Samuel Johnson,
has, we are convinced, been mistaken for an ill-natured man
because he was often irritable and bad-tempered, being
subject to a hypochondriacal fear of death, and a morbid
state of nerves, no doubt inherited, and which it was simply
impossible for him to control. It strikes us that Johnson
knew himself better than those around him ; for one day,
when he had arrived at the ripe age of sixty-six, he dumb-
founded his friend Boswell by claiming to be good-humoured;

1 82 THE BETTER SELF.

and Boswell records it "as a proof of how little a man
knows of his own character in the world." " It is a
wonderful thing, sir," said Johnson, "how rare a quality
good humour is in life. We meet with very few good-
humoured men ! "

Boswell — they were then riding in Sir Joshua Reynolds'
carriage, who, though neither mentioned the fact, had
good-humouredly and good-naturedly ridden forward alone,
leaving his carriage to the friends because Johnson was
late — mentioned four of their friends, to none of whom
Johnson allowed the full quality. One was said to be
"acid," which would certainly bar any claim to good
humour ; another was " muddy," which meant, we suppose,
dull, phlegmatic, and easy only, and so on. Then, stretch-
ing himself at ease in the coach, and rolling his head, the
great Cham of Literature said, " I look upon myself as a
good-humoured fellow."

" This light notion of himself," adds Boswell, " struck
me with wonder; " but he answered, as he notes, also smiling,
" No, no, sir, that will not do. You are good-natured, but
not good-humoured. You are irascible. You have not
patience with folly and absurdity. I believe you would
pardon them if there were time to deprecate your ven-
geance; but punishment follows so quick after sentence that
they cannot escape."

This is a noteworthy passage. Johnson no doubt did

GOOD NATURE, TEMPER, AND HUMOUR. 183

not possess patience with folly and absurdity ; but is a man
not good-humoured because he does not ? Johnson was a
great moralist, and looked severely upon the misery and
trouble that all unwise and ridiculously absurd persons,
persons deaf to reason, bring upon mankind ; was he to be
good-humoured and grin at such ? Is a man whose know-
ledge of the world ripens, as it too frequently does, into a
kindly cynicism, to be stigmatized as an ill-humoured fellow ?
Where are we to draw the line? It is plain that good
humour would only reside with hare-brained schoolboys
if this were allowed.

And, pursuing the incident, we find one of the most
ill-natured traits in the good-humoured Boswell set forth
incidentally and with such ndivetk that we cannot but smile.
" I had brought with me," says Boswell, " a great bundle of
Scotch magazines and newspapers in which his [Johnson's]
'Journey to the Western Islands' was attacked in every
mode " — let us mention that there never was a book more
brutally ridiculed and " cut up " than was this book by the
Scotch — " and," continues " the good-natured friend," " I
read a great part of these to him, knowing that it would
afford him entertainment"

Bless the word ! What kind of entertainment can a
sensitive author get — and authors must be sensitive, quick,
vivid, easily hurt and easily wounded, or they would not
be authors — from a series of ridiculous imitations and

1 84 THE BETTER SELF.

savagely critical articles on his style? One ludicrous
imitation Dr. Johnson distinguished from the mass, says
Boswell — and we think that this fact will prove that he was
really a good-tempered man. " This," he said, smiling, " is
the best ; but I could caricature my own style much better
myself" — an acute and a very good-tempered remark.

That Johnson, in spite of many roughnesses, possessed
good nature, good temper, and good humour, is proved by
his life. He made his house, when a very poor man
himself, a kind of almshouse for those who were poorer ;
he never turned away from a young author who sought an
introduction, or from a poor one who wanted a preface,
and was known to give his last guinea to relieve distress.
He no doubt put the cork in the bottle of Madeira,
purchased with his own charity-guinea by Goldsmith — who
at that moment was dunned by his landlady, and but for
the help to be carried to prison — with sufficient emphasis.
But was that ill temper ? Having an awful sense of man's
sinfulness and worldly misery, he told a smiling pert lady,
who loudly asserted that she was happy, that she was a
wonderful woman if she was happy without youth, without
good looks, without fortune, without good health, and with-
out any reasonable hope ; but can that be called ill temper ?
Is not a moralist to reprove what he deems to be hypocrisy?
When a man pleaded good intentions, Johnson thundered
out the now celebrated formula, " Sir, hell is paved with

GOOD NATURE, TEMPER, AND HUMOUR, 185

good intentions." The sense of the proverb was known,
but it had never been put so forcibly before. He who
speaks with force will feel forcibly, and we may well excuse
roughness and occasionally rudeness, for they do not always
detract from thorough good nature and proper and due
good temper.

Mercy itself, high and exalted as it is, is but a part of
good nature acting through all, and in its best and noblest
aspect ; and it is thrice blessed, blessing him that gives and
him that takes. But it is to be noted that, when exercised
in its highest instance — that of a husband forgiving an
unfaithful wife — the world, and even a higher morality than
that of the world, looks askance at such good nature.
There are some sins which we cannot wholly forgive un-
less we become partakers of them and condone them.
We cannot approve of the "Stranger" when he pardons
Mrs. Haller, though we weep at the affecting meeting :

" If you forget, the world will call you wise :
If you forgive, the world will call you good ;
But, if you take her to your heart again,
The world will call you very, very kind."

There is, therefore, a limit to that kind of good nature, a
limit standing between man and woman, seemingly hard,
cruel, and insurmountable, but yet based upon laws pro-
ceeding from a source so wise and merciful that none can
wish to overleap the granite wall of demarcation that it
has raised.

186 THE BETTER SELF.

Except in this, all three qualities that we write about
may have free exercise, and the more they are exercised the
better we shall become. There are no three minor virtues
that do more good, none that enter more intimately into the
little courtesies of life, none that are more able to gild and
make fine and resplendent a common existence, like the
sunshine which lights up a hedge-row into beauty, and
makes a bare mountain side glitter and shine with splendour.
Good nature is like the solid warmth of the earth, which
produces the fruit and warms the cold seeds into fertile
existence; good temper is the sunshine which lights up
its dark corners, and good humour the warm light which
brings forward and into pleasant prominence things else
unobserved.

The last — especially if it be accompanied with a true
humour, a witty view of things — is the great sweetener of
existence. It is, of all that is outside of us — and good
humour is hardly ever acquired, although it may be easily
strangled, and certainly may be cultivated — the very choicest
gift that man can receive. A great estate may, and often
will, make a man only more miserable, especially if he be
a very highly organized and sensitive being. A great
intellect is almost as sure to make him melancholy and
often cynical. The wisest of men are never the happiest ;
they have a keener sense of what should be, and a greater
pain in knowing what is; they feel like a neat housewife

GOOD NATURE, TEMPER, AND HUMOUR. 187

placed in a thoroughly untidy house — full of a painful sense
of disorder. Good-natured wise men often take refuge in
cynicism and sarcasm, like the melancholy Jacques in the
play, and avenge themselves by biting sentences intended
to purge the world. Great beauty — outwardly the most
enviable of gifts, the most popular and courted, and, in
its natural sphere, that of upper life and easy fortune, the
most powerful — very frequently stupefies and hardens. It
almost always makes a man a rogue and a woman a fool.
Great acquired riches — unless accompanied by good nature,
wisdom, and plenty of that rare appreciation of things
called humour — are simply a trap. When a man labours
for them himself, he generally wears himself out in the
effort, and dies before he can enjoy them ; on the other
hand, if his wealth is inherited, he needs have on hog's
armour, a thick skin, to put up with the sneers that his
friends and acquaintances will vent upon him ; but, armed
with real good humour, and cultivating good nature and
good temper, a man can pass through life with the lightest
purse and the thinnest of cloaks. Life's thorns will not
scratch him ; its troubles and pitfalls will be mere exercises
to call forth this fine quality ; its sorrows, when in his own
breast, will be softened by this anodyne, and, when in the
breasts of others, will draw forth its sweetest essence ; life's
little rubs and every-day annoyances will be but the flints
which make the sparks fly out of this true steel. Even a

1 88 THE BETTER SELF.

stupidly good-natured man is a pleasant companion ; and,
as the world goes, a good-tempered fool is by no means to
be sneered at; but when we meet with a wise man or a
wise book, replete with good humour, we should hug either
to our hearts, and grapple the first to us as a bosom friend,
ay, even with " hooks o/ steel."

( i89 )

XVIII.

THE CONTENTED MIND.

To have achieved contentment is to have conquered the
world, to have mounted the highest rung of the ladder, to
have climbed the mountain; and although it is perhaps
easier to write an essay upon content than to practise it, we
hope our readers will believe that the practice is not quite
foreign to us — that we have learnt with St. Paul, whatever
happens to us, " therewith to be content." This to forestall
those objectors who, discontented themselves, wish to
accuse all men of the same fault. What merit there is in
being contented we forbear to say.

We do not think that there is much ; or, to put it the
other way, if there be any merit, we think that it is amply
repaid. There are some dozens of blessings pronounced
upon the virtues, and they, like potatoes, are a most paying
crop ; but the one which crowns contentment pleases us the
best " A contented mind is a continual feast ; " not that
any man would be continually feasting, but, given the con-
tent, he always feels beatifically and healthily full and replete

IQO THE BETTER SELF.

as a man does after an abounding and wholesome meal.
Perhaps there is no more comfortable earthly feeling ; it is
as full of peace as a child which, having suckled sufficiently
at its mother's breast, falls off smilingly to sleep. It is full
of trust, hindered by no disquieting fears, blest above
measure because it seeks nothing beyond the present Such
is content It lives long, is healthy, does not quarrel nor
snarl, and puts the best face on matters. It is pleasant to
live with, and a good substance to work upon; it is not
rapid, nor greedy, nor slovenly in its work ; it is pleased with
its remuneration ; it digests well, and is nourished, harbours
no evil thoughts, is loyal, true, simple, and beautiful in its
holiness, and yet it has its enemies. For, beautiful as it is,
contentment is not the whole duty of man ; and it has its
detractors — nay, what is more, those detractors are not with-
out their modicum of truth.

Thus they say that content, when it possesses a man
thoroughly, renders him either too great a fool to want any-
thing, or too lazy to acquire it ; that, in this age of the world,
in most countries contentment means lethargy or death —
simply, that man was not born to be contented ; that a sulky
quiescence which passes for it, the unwillingness of man
to contend, is half made up of jealousy and half of fear ;
that contentment might have been born with Adam in
Paradise, but that it soon ceased to please him; that, if
contentment were universal, two generations of contented

THE CONTENTED MIND. 191

people would " run " most of the human race to " earth,"
and leave the remainder spiritless, lifeless, and useless ; that
contented races die out from lack of energy, and that such,
during their lives, discover little and do nothing. On the
other hand, the restlessness and ambition of man do much
for him ; and this is not to be denied. Let us look at both
sides of the question — not because we are indifferent to
truth, but because by so doing we hope the sooner to dis-
cover truth.

The shrewd American clergyman (?) who writes under
the name of Josh Billings, and who produces many wise
and often beautiful sentences in the midst of some very bad
spelling and grammar — which, by the way, is not at all
funny, but merely the exploded fashion of other writers —
gives us in the midst of his curious verbiage some very wise
sentences, and oftentimes some very pious ones. It is like
sugaring pills, to put wisdom into a mere jest-book, and to
mix serious reflections with the common rough-and-tumble-
talk of a clown in the circus ; but it is an old fashion, dating
perhaps in its earliest shape even from the time when
language first assumed a written form. When one gives the
public a large slice of unadulterated and dry wisdom in a
didactic essay, it needs great art to render it attractive and
to induce them to read it But, when one introduces the
subject with a brilliant display of bad spelling, or with a
quantity of coarse nastiness, as Rabelais — when one spells

192 THE BETTER SELF.

ambition " ambishun," and calls a man a " miserabel cuss "
— the reader picks the jewel out of the mud, wipes it clean,
and contemplates it Thus Josh Billings,, whose spelling
we now and then follow, speaks in axioms often as wise as
those of La Rochefoucauld.

"Show me a thoroughly kontented person, and i will
show you a useless phool."

" I am in favour of all the vanities and petty ambitions,
all the jealousies and backbitings in the world — not because
I think they are handsome, but because they stir up men
and women, get them on to their muscle, cultivating their
venom and reason at the same time, and proving what a
brilliant * cuss ' a man may be at the same time that it proves
what a miserable ' cuss ' he is."

" The world is now full of learning, the arts and sciences,
and all the thousand appliances of reason ; these things
make ignorance the exception, and no man has a right to
cultivate contentment enny more than he has to cut off his
thumb and nurse the stump."

" I have no right to bury my talents and to sacrifice on
the dead altar of contentment what was given me."

When the bad spelling is taken away, we see that there
is very little of what the author calls " phun," but that there
is a great deal of wisdom of a one-sided kind. Let us take,
for instance, his view of the petty ambitions and the vanities
of life, and grant that they stir up men and women, and

THE CONTENTED MIND. 193

cultivate their venom and wisdom ; but, if we do so too con-
fidingly, we shall be showing ourselves contented with a
partial view. How much evil have the vanities of life not
done ! How much misery and bloodshed do the petty
ambitions and the jealousies of the world occasion ! If we
strike a balance between the good and evil, and allow that
nothing is perhaps wholly evil, that is all we can fairly do.

Moreover, is it certain that discontent creates in us the
ambition to discover and to invent ? We very much ques-
tion this. Poets write and versify as linnets sing, because
they must, and because of the God-given power, and, more-
over, because they are happy while they are so doing. It
may enter into a modern " philosopher's " conception
that a hungry and discontented bear once swam out to
catch fish, and by fitness and constant change through
centuries bred into the walrus. Our stupidity may be very
great, but we honestly cannot conceive that such was
the case. We believe in purpose — walrus for water and
bear for land ; and what is true of the larger is true of the
less. The inventor generally, we presume, invents because
he has had given to him an active and creative brain.
Necessity may urge him to be active in the way he is biased,
and undoubtedly does do so; but hundreds of thousands of
persons feel the stings of necessity and the pangs of discon-
tent before one inventor shows them the way out of them.
Thus it is that " necessity is the mother of invention " is,

o

194 THE BETTER SELF,

like all other truths, only true in a restricted sense. Whole
races of men are non-inventive and stationary ; whether they
are contented or not, is a question ; their necessities are as
great as our own, and they are as eager to embrace the re-
sults of invention. Man must therefore be regarded really as
a creature of gifts, and these gifts are restricted in their full-
ness to perhaps much less than a fourth of the inhabitants of
the globe. Such gifts may be stimulated by necessity, but
they are not created by it, and a part of the diatribe against
contentment, viewed in this light, must fall to the ground.

Again, it may be very well urged — and a hundred bio-
graphies will support the assertion — that, as a rule, great
inventors, poets, wise writers, lawgivers, and those who with
most active brains improve their condition and their fellows'
condition are, comparatively, the most contented of the
earth. Great painters are proverbially so. Let us take
Turner, a creative genius of a very high order, who revealed
to this age the beauty of colour, the grandeur of the clouds
and the atmosphere, the majesty of landscape, and the
glories of the sky. Actually, as regards either the luxuries
or the bare necessities of life, the man was far beyond think-
ing of them, much less caring for them. He would often
work without food, forgetful of hunger. To him to paint, to
roll up his compositions, to sell them, to heap up his money
without using it, to live as meanly as an ill-paid artisan, to
clothe himself shabbily, seldom to enter into society, and to

THE CONTENTED MIND. 195

indulge as little as possible in the vanities of this life, was
sufficient That he was jealous of a rival who " put out "
his landscape by crude colour hanging next to it — that he
had a noble ambition ^to excel the French landscape-painter,
Claude Lorraine, we do not attempt to deny. But, as a
rule, his life was passed in obscurity and in contentment,
himself not dreaming of how great a painter he was until
the brilliant criticisms of John Ruskin threw a glare of light
and fame upon him. Surely he did not owe his genius and
greatness to his discontent ?

So much as we know of Shakspere and Milton will
reveal to us little of discontent in these great minds.
Shakspere has been accused of being so careless of fame
that he neither gathered his plays during his life, as did
his great rival Jonson, calling them Works, nor did he, says
Jonson, take trouble to blot and correct those that he had
written. There is evidence that he improved and re-wrote
Hamlet, but not much else ; and his contemporaries and
those that followed them nearly all speak of his rough-and-
ready workmanship. When he had by other means than
his dramas accumulated sufficient, he retired to his native
town, spent his money freely, and died at an early age,
comparatively speaking. We may gather from his works a
whole cento of splendid passages in favour of content and
of her sister virtues. " Poof and content," he says, " is
rich and rich enough," a line which exactly fits the subject

196 THE BETTER SELF.

and us better than the French " Contentment exceeds
riches."

Milton lay under a cloud during the latter part of his
life. His noble cause was in disgrace, himself almost a
proscribed man, allowed probably to live because all Europe
would have been scandalized had he been executed. Yet
blind, comparatively poor and deserted, there is at least
very little expression of discontent in his writings ; his noble
lines on his blindness breathe a splendid acquiescence in
and a noble submission to the Divine will. One line in
that sonnet which pictures himself as unable to work, and yet
shows how God is surrounded by ranged angels and willing
messengers to do His will, deserves to be written up over
every restless man's desk or mantelpiece —

"They also serve who only stand and wait."

These are not the sentiments of a " phool."

And what we have said of these two great poets may
be said of almost every inventor and brain-worker. That
inventors are often discontented men no one will affect to
deny ; but they are so because others steal their ideas, or
they are not appreciated, or they lay hold of the wrong end
of the invention ; but, from Arkwright and Stephenson
far away back to Archimedes, all inventors have been
singularly modest and quiet individuals, so full of their
great ideas that they never troubled their neighbours except

THE CONTENTED MIND. 197

to get material to carry on their designs. Like spiders, they
must spin, and like spiders, if left to spin quietly, they fulfil
their function happily enough. So much for the assertion
that it is to the want of content we owe so much. It is so
far from being so that we may roundly assert that it is to
the peaceful operations of a contented mind that we are
greatly indebted. Of course it is indicative of the restless
spirit of America and England that few patent plain old
truths are allowed to go unquestioned. A man who tells
us that two and two make four is perhaps too strongly
posted in his facts to be questioned ; but here we find a
man who denies that contentment is a blessing, and asserts
that man is never contented, and then, if he be so, he is a
"mean cuss. ,,

When contentment means the contraction and lethargy
of death, of course it is bad ; when it means a wise and
sustained circumscription, it is like a belt round a man's
loins, strengthening him wholly. Of course it is to be con-
strued generously. It is like the Church Catechism, and
means life and not death. We do not praise a corpse for
its calm quiescence in its coffin ; and when a child defines
his duty towards his neighbour as consisting in trying " to
learn and labour truly to get mine own living, &c, in that
state of life unto which it has pleased God to call me," we
are to remember that the past includes the future. We are
not stationary, nor asked to be so ; the religion which most

198 THE BETTER SELF.

preaches content is the most unwearied and active in the
world. The catechised who as a drummer-boy does his
duty may be, ere he is twenty-two, a colour-sergeant, and
in a battle win his officer's commission; there are many
instances in our army now. He is not absolved from his
vow to duty any more than he was bound down always to
remain a drummer-boy. But, if he is content with the one,
he will be with the other, and he will do his duty a thousand-
fold better in both positions ; and while so doing he will be
so much better.

Content carries in one hand health, and in the other
happiness — and few will deny the beauty of these. It is
of its own nature generous ; contracting our desires, it leaves
us time to think of the wants and necessities of others. It
is wisdom — plain, practical wisdom. After all, if we have
enough to eat and drink, and wherewithal to be clothed
decently, and in a cleanly fashion, what much else do we
want ? " Is that great animal better," says Jeremy Taylor,
with one of his poetical similes, "that hath two or three
mountains to graze o'er than a little bee that feeds on dew
and the manna of flowers, and what falls every morning from
the storehouse of heaven, clouds, and Providence ? Can a
man quench his thirst better out of a river than a full urn,
or drink better from the fountain that is richly paved with
marble thari when it wells from the hill-side and fresh green
turf? "

THE CONTENTED MIND. 199

Nevertheless, we admit that content must ever be com-
parative. It must be so, or it would not be the merit of the
well-to-do as well as of the poor. A man whose knowledge
is bounded by the walls of his cottage, and whose desires
are mere appetites, can be easily satisfied. Knowledge
increases our legitimate wants. It would not now do to be
content with bows and arrows for warfare, or the scythed
chariot of the Britons for a cavalry charge against a picked
body of riflemen, backed by a few Armstrong and Gatling
guns. As the world advances our horizon widens, but we
can still grasp the golden circlet of supremely wise content.
How great and good it is to sit at Nature's feast, and feel
satisfied and thankful whilst others storm and struggle and
push forward for the first places, and yet are not better filled
than we are ! There is but one man greater than any rich
man, and that is he that is satisfied with little. And this
kind of satisfaction can never be taken away : it resides in
a man's own self; it is like the Kingdom of God, of which
it forms a part within him.

2oo THE BETTER SELF.

XIX.
DOMESTIC ECONOMY.

One wonders whether the world believes that the prosaic
duties of paying one's debts and living below one's income
(a very hard matter for some of us), ever enters into the list
of heroic virtues which constitute the best part of the better
self. And yet they do, especially the latter.

Thrift is a badly used English word, not understood, and
almost as much out of fashion as the practice of the thing
it signifies. People seem to have imagined that it was a
matter to be ashamed of, and that Hamlet's excuse of his
mother's hasty marriage on the ground of

" Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral bak'd meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables, "

was a satire against thrift, instead of being a bitter and
scathing invective against an incontinent and hasty marriage.
In these showy, veneered, French-polished, and foolishly
profuse times, a few words on thrift may be of use; but in
writing a short essay we must not fancy that we can accom-

DOMESTIC ECONOMY, 201

plishmuch all at once. The writer is the sower who goes
out to sow seed ; his words may do good, or they may fail.
In nineteen cases out of twenty they do fail, but if he
succeeds in planting only one or two sound thoughts, then
he does God service ; and to do that is to do good service.

Let us, then, clear the way. Thrift is not a word of evil
significance, but of good ; it does not carry an imputation
of meanness, but of wisdom ; it does not mean improperly
saving up or hoarding money, but wisely spending it. It is
perhaps one of the highest attributes of very high natures.
When it accompanies a great man, it makes him very great ;
it completes the building ; sets him up as one who is totus
teres atque rotundus, like a scholar who is a mathematician
as well as a scholar, and is a "double first;" first in the
classical and first in the mathematical tripos of this great
university. As to other men we may dispute, but as to
Shakspere — except among some insanely conceited young
prigs — there is no doubt that he possessed the highest
imaginative and reflective intellect the world has ever known :
and he was especially a thrifty man.

He came to London with nothing, he had little or
nothing when he was thirty, and he died possessor of the
best house in his native town, and making (so said the
vicar) two thousand a year, which must have been a very
large sum in our present money. He had a share in two
theatres, a large wardrobe of player's clothes, a house at

i

202 THE BETTER SELF.

Bankside, some estate in the country ; he gave money, and
he lent money. He was certainly a successful man, for his
works were received by his fellows with all the jealousy and
apathy that success provokes. One need not then suppose
that thrift shows a small mind, nor that it is meanness or
want of generosity. A more genial and generous man than
Shakspere, for one so wise, it is difficult to conceive.

The derivation of " thrift " will help us to its true
meaning. Thrift is only the past participle of the verb
to thrive, and probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon thrqfian,
urgere, or co-agere, to get on, press together, heap up; or its
original root threaf, a thrave or threave, a capital old word,
not yet obsolete, meaning a handful, a gathering, and also a
bottle. It always carries with it an idea of wisdom, of
carefully and wisely doing a thing. Thus singeth Master
George Chapman, in his " Homer " : —

" We may both safely make retreat and thriftily employ
Our boldeness in some great affaire, baneful to them of Troy. "

The Duke of Wellington was especially and most honour-
ably thrifty of his men. " If," said one of the Indian
princes, " I had such soldiers as the English, I would carry
them to the field of battle in chairs of gold, and let them
do nothing but fight I would save them as if they were
made all of diamonds." The Duke always acted upon that
principle, and was prodigal of himself only. He would

DOMESTIC ECONOMY, 203

worry the Government till they hated his very name ; punish
a commissariat-general ; write, plead, do anything for his
soldiers ; even on certain occasions hang one, as a saving
example. Napoleon, on the other hand, careless of means,
and greedy of the event, was prodigal of human life, and
almost utterly regardless of human suffering. But which
was the more honourable and the greater soldier ? Perhaps
the wise after-time will do justice to the little, cold, quiet,
impassive English officer, who did not make harangues, nor
issue eloquent and big-worded proclamations, but simply did
his duty, and managed to win. Actually, to go back to our
word, "thrift" is thrived or thriven, and to thrive means
"to accumulate ; to be or become rich, wealthy, prosperous;
to prosper, to succeed, to improve." Its secondary meaning
is to be frugal, provident, cautious, and careful.

The present is a thriftless age. We have made money, —
some people are making it now ; but with the various sets-
off against us, with the complaints and starvation of our
agricultural class, we cannot have much to brag about. The
nation, as a whole, is accumulating wealth, but is not wisely
saving it. She is sending away by enforced emigration some
excellent productive wealth ; she is keeping other living
wealth in constrained and most unwilling idleness. This
is not thrift.

Thrift, then, is not simply saving. You must do some-
thing; you must have increase, or, at least, not decrease.

204 THE BETTER SELF,

Johnson, who with a very little money kept a large family of
strangers in his house, had always something to spend and
a guinea to give away ; whereas Goldsmith, who had a more
marketable talent, and made money much more easily, was
always poor, and glad to take the doctor's guinea. Dr.
Johnson easily learnt the practice of thrift : and he tells us
upon what a small sum he managed to live when he first
came to London. " I dined," he said, " very well for eight-
pence at the 'Pine Apple/ in New Street, and with very
good company. Some of them had travelled. They
expected to meet every day, but did not know each other's
names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank
wine " (claret — the extremely high wine duties were not
then in force) ; " but I had a cut of meat for sixpence,
and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny ; so
that I was quite as well served, nay, better, than the rest, for
they gave nothing." Here, then, is a true instance of thrift,
accompanied by generosity ; and if sixpennyworth of meat
and a pennyworth of bread will feed a man, so as to keep
him in health and manly vigour, why should he not make
that sufficiency his rule? As Johnson wrote in 1737, and
the price of provision has increased, let us multiply the
eightpence by three; the relative value of the sum then and
now. Certainly any young man in London can 'dine well
for two shillings per diem.

Johnson's was a very direct mind. When oppressed

DOMESTIC ECONOMY, 205

with neuralgia and melancholy he was asked as to the relative
value of wines, and he jumped at once to the ultimate cause
of the desire for this luxury. " After all," he said, "brandy
is the best ; that does for a man quickest and best what he
wants doing" That is, it soothes, drugs, and intoxicates, if
you will : and that, in plain English — only they do not own
it — is what most men want.

A gentleman, an Irish painter, whom Johnson met in
early days, was the original of Ofellus in the Art of Living.
So far from thinking that one ought to have at least three
hundred a year, this wise gentleman said of London that
" thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to live
there without being contemptible." He allowed ten pounds
for clothes and linen ; he said a man might live in a garret
at eighteen-pence a week ; he might dine for sixpence ; by
spending threepence a day in a coffee-house he might be for
some hours a day in very good company ; he might breakfast
on bread and milk for a penny, and do without supper.
" On clean shirt days he should go abroad and pay visits."

This, of course, will not quite do for our times ; thirty
pounds a year then represented perhaps ninety of this day; but
we seriously maintain that such an existence, narrowed as it is,
and yet made pure and beautiful by moderation and content,
is a thousand times more noble than that of the always full
and feasted wasteful young citizen or city clerk of to-day,
always well-dressed, well-gloved, clean-shirted, who spends

206 THE BETTER SELF,

three or four or six shillings for his dinner, is wasteful,
gluttonous, loud, selfish, and full of pride and folly. Our
age is supremely careless and luxurious ; we mistake riot for
generosity, and luxury and license for liberality. It is well
to be recalled to the wisdom of saving. No man, except
the miser who starved himself to death, ever repented of
checking his appetites and restraining his passions.

Johnson, thirty years afterwards, referred to the duty of
thrift, when he wrote to Mr. Benet Langton, a gentleman of
birth and fortune, to inquire how his uncle, Mr. Peregrine
Langton, had lived ; for this he said was notable in him, that
he was to be distinguished " for piety and economy." Here
Johnson uses economy in its new sense, for " thrifty manage-
ment, frugality in the use of money, time, or labour," as
defined in our dictionaries. Peregrine Langton was just
dead (1766); he had an annuity of two hundred a-year,
and rented a house and a few acres for twenty-eight pounds
a year; his sister paid him eighteen pounds a year for board
and lodging, and he maintained a niece. His family was
served by two maids and two men in livery ; he had a
carriage and horses. " He always had a post-chaise, and
kept three horses." * He was served daily with three or

* If he in his time could have done this, at what state could not
Shakspere have lived with his two thousand a year in the days of
James I ? We must all be sadly afraid that the Stratford-on- Avon's
parson's legend is an exaggeration.

DOMESTIC ECONOMY, 207

four dishes ; the appurtenances of his table were neat and
handsome; he frequently entertained company, when he
gave as good as the neighbouring gentry, and yet he had
always a sum of money lying by him for any extraordinary
need What money he saved he put in the funds, and when
he died he had a hundred and fifty pounds there. He often
lent money to neighbours, always paid cash, never keeping
his creditors waiting ; nay, he would take his custom from
a tradesman who trusted his servants. His servants having
said that the ale was not enough, he, to prove that it was,
ordered the quantity to be bottled, and served out so
many bottles a day, "eight quarts, which is the quantity
each day at a hogshead a month ; " whereupon his servants
found they had had too much, and not too little.

That is exactly thrift. Here is a man, even too liberal,
giving sixteen pints of beer a day to four women and three
men, and yet having to prove his liberality to them by
management; and yet how stupid have our greatest men
been in this respect ! How very foolish are our young men
and good families now ! William Pitt — the son of him who
is so much praised by Carlyle as having checked France,
and " created " Prussia — died shockingly in debt. In 1801
he owed ,£45,864, and paid his creditors five shillings in
the pound by the aid of a loan. Yet his butcher's bill —
there was no wife to superintend the house — was so enor-
mous, that some one has calculated it as affording his

208 THE BETTER SELF.

servants about fourteen pounds of meat a day, each man
and woman ! Pitt was an instance, you will say, from the
old wasteful Tory days; but his salary (five thousand pounds
a year) was ample then, whereas it would not be so now
for a Prime Minister. Then, too, look at Richard Cobden,
who sought to check the expenditure of the nation, and
never stopped his own. Three times he came upon the
nation ; three times he sent (or his friends sent) " the hat
round," and he claimed and got liberal assistance. His
friend Joseph Hume was more consistent. Coming home
one day, he saw a new and strange cat crossing his hall, and
wisely told his housekeeper that two cats were enough to
kill all the mice in a London house, and that the newly
imported Tom must be banished, or die. People laugh at
this anecdote. Why ? Because a man governs vast con-
cerns, is it shameful in him to look to trifles ? Trifles make
up the sum of life. To use once more a worn-out but well-
filled illustration, an elephant, which can rend an oak, can
also pick up a pin with his trunk. Is the pin-picking, if
this be true, any proof of weakness ?

The truth is, we of the Teuton, or to use a much abused
, phrase, the Anglo-Saxon race, are a very profuse, wasteful,
foolish race. )Vebster, the American statesman, an excellent
man, was worried all his life with little debts, although his
earnings were immense. There is nothing more sad than
that a great life should be rendered sordid and mean from

DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 209

want of a little prudence. And yet it is so with some of the
best and highest intellects we have. Men of letters, artists,
actors, philosophers, and scholars are too often deficient in
the great, honest, and wise principle that lies at the bottom
of thrift. So also are many clergymen ; and yet the Apostle
tells us that " if any provide not for his own, and especially
for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is
worse than an infidel." How can a spendthrift be just?
How can he dare to be generous ? Why, if I think great
thoughts, should I be excused if I do foolish actions ? If I
paint a good picture, do I not own myself an incomplete
thing if I cannot spend a pound properly ? If I act Hamlet
like a genius, am I not a fool if I cannot be trusted with
money that I owe to my tailor, when a wine bottle is near
me ? Is not profuseness weakness ? We shall most of us
agree to say that it is.

2io THE BETTER SELF.

XX.

EXPECTANCY.

In one of Victorien Sardou's pieces, which attracted great
popularity in Paris, there is a fine "situation" of which
the actors, with that brilliant tact and taste for which
French artistes are celebrated, make much. The audience
are compelled to take a political view of the scene ; and,
between the fine acting and the political hit, the " situation"
does not fail to bring down a storm of applause. The
incident occurs in Le Roi Carotte, a very much mutilated
edition of which was played in London, with all its moral
and its politics cut out as a thing of nought. Suffice it
to say that, in France under the Empire that fell at S&lan,
the very name of the vegetable hero and the necessary
colour of his costume were covert allusions to the Red
Republic which an English audience would neither under-
stand nor appreciate. The freedom of Englishmen under
an Executive which they themselves elect and can at a
moment dismiss, and the despotisms of which, small as

EXPECTANCY. 211

they may be — such as the peremptory closing of public-
houses and the restrictions of the liquor traffic — they (the
public) themselves demand and sometimes clamour for,
is so great that they cannot be expected to feel the fiery
impatience of a nation groaning under the paternal inter-
ference of an Executive which never knew the art of
leaving well alone, and which meddled with and taxed
everything. In saying this much, we do not deny that
England is pretty well favoured with taxes, as every •pro-
minent and busy nation with a part to play in the world
must be; but, through their representatives, the people of
Great Britain have "a word or two" to say before such
taxes are imposed ; and after all, we must admit that most
of them are the result of our greatness.

To return to Sardou's piece. The Prince who is the
hero possesses inexhaustible riches and a power that has
no bounds; he has also immortality; and yet, seeking a
magician, he wishes this gift to be taken away from him
and to die. Upon this the magician naturally asks why?
" You see this purse," says the Prince : " I have only to
wish for money, and it is rilled ; whatever is most precious,
beautiful, and costly is mine. You think this gain ? Alas !
in this I lose all the pleasure of anticipation — all the de-
lights of winning anything by my own exertions. All that
I have costs me nothing ; everything is therefore worthless.
I can have no pleasure in possession ; the humblest peasant

212 THE BETTER SELF.

who cultivates his plot of ground is happier than I." " But
there is friendship," suggests the magician. " Alas ! how
can I test that ? Everybody bows to me for my riches or
for my power." " Love ? " adds his interlocutor, " Worse
and worse ; I have but to wish, and the most beautiful,
most charming, most intellectual women at once yield to
me. What do I know of the mingled pleasure and pain
of gaining a true and pure heart? What of the rapture
which crowns the happy lover who dotes yet doubts — who
trembles in expectation, and who, when he hears the soft
confession, is lifted to the seventh heaven of bliss ? What
do I know — what can I know — of that subtle, sweet self-
flattery which tells the poorest of my subjects that he is
esteemed and loved for himself alone ? " " Alas I my
Prince," is the sad rejoinder, " beware of absolute power."

The sting and the poison, the honey and the virtue of
the piece, are in those last words. Napoleon III. must
have found other reasons when, deceived and betrayed, his
army disappeared before the Prussians — that army com-
posed of brave men unfed, unequipped, and unshod. But
the lesson is not for him, but for us. We are none of us
likely to have absolute power, although we may be little
tyrants in our own way ; but we may as well reflect that if
we had it, it would be a curse. We should, at least, miss
the hopes and fears of life, which, like contrasts of colour in
a picture, add harmony to the whole. We grumble a good

EXPECTANCY. 213

deal here about the weather, although Charles II., always
sententiously wise,

" Who never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one ! "

told his courtiers not to grumble about it. " I have tra-
velled," he said, alluding to his exile, " in various countries,
and I assure you that, for pleasant, wholesome out-door
exercise England has the best climate of the whole." For
the epigram just cited he cared nothing; for he said "it
was quite true, as his words were his own, but his actions
were his Ministers7 , As Hood's rose-girl, hawking roses
from door to door, " hates the smell of roses," so there are
those who hate the pitiless and blinding sunshine which
strikes upward, reflecting from hot sand, bleached flag-
stones, or pebbly beach, until the eye grows tired and the
brain reels. We complain of drizzling rains ; what are they
to the tropical down-pour or the mountain storm, which
tears and ravages the earth, and in a few hours rends out
deep watercourses and turns the dry land into a lake ? The
middle state is by far the best of all — the middle state,
never free from fears, but always accompanied by hopes —
that state which bars no gate to a lawful ambition, and
which strengthens while it controls.

In addition to this consideration, it must be noted that
the man who is the richest and greatest, the man who has
all his desires and wishes most nearly fulfilled, is by no

214 THE BETTER SELF.

means the happiest It is the fullest stream that looks
the most gloomy; whereas the shallow brook runs bright,
sparkling, and dimpling in the morning sun. The happy
man is he who, in health and with due caution and wisdom,
is pursuing what he knows to be right ; and this men with
well-regulated minds must do when they have their families
and themselves to provide for. Such a man, engaged in
the pursuit of the useful, distinguishes, to use the words of
Walter Savage Landor, the true boundary between desire
and delight, and stands firmly upon the upper ground. He
who knows that pleasure is not only not possession, but is
always to be lost and always to be endangered, will be
moderate in his hopes. The old story, so many times
told, of Alexander the Great's crying because he had no
more worlds to conquer, shows us how dangerous it is to
put a limit to Hope. And truly, the usual run of preachers
and essayists, of moralists and poets, have dealt unfairly with
Hope. With them it is assailed with the common-place
objurgations of being delusive, deceitful, a bubble, a cheat,
and a flatterer. So it is, if one likes to make it so. But
the fault lies with the individual. This we have said before,
but it may as well be repeated : it is a tune well worth
playing over and over again, at a time wherein young and
old have lost a good deal of that bright hope which the
nation used to have. More than one change of faith, aye
and shipwreck of faith, begins with a want of hope. It

EXPECTANCY. 215

relieves poverty, takes away the sting from rejection, and
defeats and smooths the pillow of disease and pain.

If it does all this, wherein is it delusive? What can
a man ask for more? We find fault with our medicine,
with the breath that that medicine has given us ; we abuse
our food with the strength it has furnished, if we allow that
Hope soothes our woes, and yet complain of it Hope is
the very life-blood of the unfortunate ; and, as a rule, it
is precisely those who are most unfortunate who have most
Hope. Among the phenomena which astonish physicians
and doctors is the fact that, under the most depressing
circumstances, under diseases which lower the strength and
fret and decay the body, accompanying pain which racks
and irritations which torment, Hope flourishes in a manner
marvellous and unaccountable, and almost incredible; how
it does so, they cannot say. Any one who has visited the
poor and the afflicted must have often marvelled at their
patience. People in hospitals and upon sick beds seem to
us like those far down in wells and deep pits, who can
see the stars shining which the greater light hides from us.
It is for small mercies that we are the most thankful, and
Hope never deserts us at our worst need. If we once allow
the truth of Pope's couplet — and he must be a bold man
who questions it —

" Hope springs eternal in the human breast ;
Man never is, but always to be, blest,"

216 THE BETTER SELF.

we must at once concede that man is a happy creature, and
that in enjoying Hope he enjoys something more pleasing,
certainly much more brilliant and better than possession.
Hope, or expectation, is a long-enduring pleasure ; posses-
sion to most of us affords only a brief regret " Well, I am
sorry that it is all over, and I wish I was going again this
day week," said the boy, after he had seen the pantomime.
He wanted the excitement of Hope ; fruition of the play
was but at best a few hours' indulgence — like looking at
fireworks, an enjoyment, brilliant perhaps, but certainly
evanescent.

Although hopes are antagonistic to fears — for Hope in-
creases courage, makes a man ready to face danger, dis-
covers new continents, finds out hidden treasures and fruitful
islands, and is at the bottom of all the work of the world —
yet without them the former would weave into far too gay a
pattern. The fears supply the darker colours, and work
well into the design. As Walt Whitman said of the graves
of the soldiers and the bodies of the dead men during the
American War — " They too fit well into the landscape ! "
The fears we speak of check and at the same time strengthen
our hopes ; they prune the tree, and the wood grows the
stronger. In fact, were it not for them, Hope would merge
into certainty, without those gradations of doubt which make
even deferred hopes brilliant and beautiful. It is well now
and then to dash and discolour the hopes of the young, but

EXPECTANCY. 217

not to destroy them. Anaxagoras, the wise Greek, thought
it better by far' to supply them to the young — but at a
distance. Being asked by the people of Lampsacus
whether, when he died, they could do anything to com-
memorate him, " Yes," he answered, " let the boys have a
holiday on the anniversary of my death." To that he knew
they would look forward, and by that would he be remem-
bered. There is something very beautiful in the gentle
wisdom which dictated the answer. The harder the tasks,
the greater the troubles of the little Greek scholars, the
brighter would appear the holiday they were to have ; and
when they had grown into reflective men, and looked back
on happy days gilded with the spring of youth, they would
remember the occasion, and inquire who was that Anax-
agoras who had got them the holiday. The world ought to
show more men like this philosopher, who built his hopes of
being remembered after death on the happiness he had
given to those who remained alive.

The most frequently quoted passage concerning Hope
is one that does not do much credit to man's appreciation
of the blessing : for a blessing it is, the* basis of courage,
force, endeavour, and power; so much so, that there is no
instance that can be cited from history of a great man who
was not, at least during his time of action — his youth and
his manhood — a hopeful man. The quotation referred to is
generally unfairly given, because its best and explanatory

218 TEE BETTER SELF.

half is omitted. It is from the Proverbs of Solomon :
" Hope deferred maketh the heart sick ; but " — here comes
the chief clause — " when the desire cometh it is a tree of
life.* The first clause refers to the fears which always
accompany Hope, as the shadow follows the figure of a man
walking in the sunshine; but the " desire " (literally the
Hope), when it cometh, is " a tree of life."

Doctor Johnson, sage in his observation, although a man
bent down by hereditary disease and many cares, recognises
this. Throughout his works there are constant references to
the good which Hope does. "Whatever enlarges Hope," he
says in one place, "will exalt courage;" in another,
" Always cultivate Hope : our powers owe much of then-
energy to our hopes." Again, " It is the chief blessing of
man ; " ay, not only a blessing in the sense that some people
mean — a spiritual aid, an unseen, an intangible matter —
but real riches, real comfort, and true health. He is poor
indeed who has lost all Hope, and is a mere subject to fear
and dread and melancholy. The fearful, hopeless man is
truly poor, a double sufferer, an anticipator of evils, a shrink-
ing coward when those evils come ; whereas Hope, like the
cork jacket to a man learning to swim, not only supports
him and gives him strength at the outset, when he most
wants it, but absolutely teaches him and sustains him in his
endeavours.

It will be well if parents, and those who try to attain a

EXPECTANCY. 219

better self, would try to cultivate and not to check hopes in
their children and themselves. Some old bachelor relations
seem akin to Ralph Nickleby, who calls Nicholas a boy,
with supreme contempt, as if he never had been a boy him-
self, and as if he could be so at any time of his life, but
would not be on any account These old bachelors, and
old maids too, not being accustomed to children, are
shocked and astonished at their exuberant happiness and
ever-budding hopes. The great point that these kindly
relations make is to continually snip off such tender buds ;
or, if they find Hope blossoming, to root up as much as
they can of the blessed flower. " Oh, we are going out,
auntie, into the country : we shall be so happy ! " " My
child," is the sombre reply, " we are not made to be happy;
the last time / went out it rained all day long, and spoilt
my new silk dress." " Blessed is he," cries the dry and
misanthropic uncle, "who expecteth nothing; verily, he
shall not be disappointed." We doubt and question both
clauses of the sentence. A man who expects nothing is the
very reverse of blessed. A man without Hope sinks like

•

lead to the bottom of Life's turbid stream. Nor do we
bdfeve that he is not disappointed. The man who hypo-
critically pretends that he expects nothing, that he is a con-
tented creature, without Hope and without any extravagant
idea, accepting the plain jog-trot way of life, is generally a
selfish, quiet, reticent fellow, who indulges in the wildest

220 THE BETTER SELF.

and who would not be surprised if a relation left
him a windfall of half a million, or die inhabitants of the
Fiji Islands came over here to lay their crown at his feet
Let us teach children to indulge in moderate and manly
hopes; not to be played with, but to be supported by.
Such hopes almost always come true, as good men will tell
who have known life's ways and God's goodness, and who
own that He gives to by for the greatest number of us
" more than we either desire or deserve. 9

( 221 )

XXI.

ON KEEPING PEOPLE DOWN,

Next to the generous and open approval certainly should
be considered that famous family panacea with some people,
of educating children by " snubbing " and pressing them
down. Now he who said that a positive injury was sooner
forgiven and forgotten than a positive insult, was quite right.
The sense of injury brings with it a feeling of importance,
but not the snub. A little farmer will brag that Lord Dash-
away, a neighbouring potentate of the hunting-field, has
committed a trespass, and he feels happy. It is no matter
that he has a few acres of turnips ruined from the way in
which " my lord," followed by the whole " field," careered,
like a Wilder Jdger y over the turnip patch. For the time
the agriculturist is on an equality with " my lord ; " but if
Mr. Wurzell had been snubbed by his lordship, had been
contemptuously overlooked or slighted, he would feel much
more hurt.

This sort of deadly wound is one of the facts and one of
the puzzles of humanity. It is certain that all feel a slight ;

222 THE BETTER SELF.

and yet at the same time the word itself shows the small
importance of the injury. When Dryden, in one of his
fine and sonorous verses, made his heroine say —

" My wound is great because it is so small,"

the Duke of Buckingham, who hated and ridiculed the brave
old poet, rose in his box and rejoined, in a loud voice —

" Then it were greater were it none at all ! "

But, though he destroyed the chance of the play, he did not
root up the truth of the line. Wounds are often . great be-
cause they are small ; and perhaps Buckingham's line is not
altogether nonsense. It may be that, when there is no
wound at all, we are worst off. Here is a subtle confession,
made in a speech by the grave Mr. Henry Richard, M.P.

" The Nonconformists," he had the humour or satire to
say, "were an eminently quiet, retiring, and domestic
people " — then who causes the commotion ? " They were
sometimes called the stormy petrels of politics, delighting
in the strife of elements, and taking pleasure in contention ;
but that was not the case. He only wished to pull down
the partition wall (the Church) between Conformists and
Nonconformists, that they might be placed on a level of
absolute freedom." Considering how lively the Noncon-
formists are, that several were in the late Government, and
that they did almost what they liked with Ireland, and have
broken up every scheme of general education for fifty years,

ON KEEPING PEOPLE DOWN. 223

this was not so bad. Mr. Richard then enumerated the
wrongs he and his fellows have to bear. " Nonconformists
were told that the only sacrifices they had to bear were
social sacrifices. But what sacrifices could be more galling
than these? They were insulted, sneered at, looked at
askance, and placed at a disadvantage in competition for
public offices."

These were now all the grievances of which Mr. Richard,
in a sensational speech, had to complain. The great and
good John Bunyan was imprisoned by a tyrannical govern-
ment — and the circumstance was a providential one, for
through it we acquired the tinker's wonderful book. The
saint-like early Nonconformists — of whom there were many
— suffered from the operation of the Five-mile Act, and had
to travel ten miles to and fro to preach their antagonism.
But Mr. Miall and Mr. Richard, M.P., have to undergo no
such deprivations, and, in the way of exaggeration, "give
rein " entirely to their imagination. We need hardly say
that since, in four short years, two of the senior wranglers of
Cambridge have been sons of Nonconformists, and that
these young men would be welcomed in any office or in any
society — since Jews, the most nonconforming of all, have
held eminent offices under Government and entertain
the Heir to the Crown as a guest — what Mr. Richard
says is simply untrue. As to the fact of Nonconformists
being "insulted, sneered at, looked at askance," we can say

224 THE BETTER SELF.

little. They are perhaps snubbed — they know best whether
they are or not. A Churchman, for instance, does not
desire to be married in a Dissenting chapel, nor to be
buried in a Dissenters' burial-ground ; therefore neither he
nor his friends get "snubbed" by refusal. Nor does he
hear the surprised " Oh ! " of the parson when a life-long
dissent is broken up by such occasional conformity. But,
beyond that, the Dissenter gets really no more than he asks
for. He himself has chosen, for conscience' sake, to be a
Dissenter. Is he so unheroic as to wish to play the part of
a hero and yet to bear no pain or penalty? He -chooses,
let us say, to be a Quaker, and to wear a broad-brimmed hat
and a straight-cut coat Do his fellow Christians " snub "
him because their hats are narrow and their collars fold
over ? He deems it sinful to take an oath, and he has been
relieved from the necessity, while we are obliged to swear.
It is we who are " snubbed."

If we choose to separate in thought or in action from the
body of our fellow-Christians, we must be prepared to
hallow our sacrifice in some way. If we choose to abstain
from wine, we cannot be angry if the bottle is not put before
us. To go away from the herd, and then to say that we are
ill-used and have the worst of the pasturage, is to complain
with as comical an ignorance as the clown in Hamlet, who
says it is a shame that the rich people should be allowed to
kill themselves more than their " even Christians."

ON KEEPING PEOPLE DOWN. 225

And a very happy thing it is for us that we can record
the fact that all that Mr. Miall and Mr. Richard can say is
that " Noncons." get " snubbed." Their wound is great
because it is so small. No one wishes to elevate them into
martyrs — and nothing hurts some people so much as being
let " severely alone."

If we turn to the " weaker vessel," as woman has been
called, in simple and Christian charity, we shall find that
very much of the injustice she complains of amounts merely
to "snubbing." There are questions that men think too
delicate to debate before women, as unfitted for their ex-
perience. There are secrets in all trades ; and we who, so
to speak, carry on the trade of being men, object to the
presence of those who are not of our sex. We do this
partly out of politeness, partly because women are not cool
judges of affairs masculine, partly because we consider
certain provinces to be our own. Our simple reservation
of many of the hardest, most unpleasant, and worst-paid
businesses to our sex has hurt women more than we know.
They quarrel with nature and with society. A woman
writes that "women are weak because they have not that
bracing education of mind and body that men receive.
Women marry simply for a home, because they have not
been trained to fight the battle of life for themselves, and
because their lives are so dull and stagnant that they think
any change must be for the better. And what misery does

Q

226 THE BETTER SELF.

a so-called love match end in ! Why, if girls had some
real work in the world to do, they would not have time
to imagine themselves in love with the first man who
proposes. "

This is like nurse beating the ground because baby
throws himself down. Woman's work is just as " real " as
man's. Woman's education is not so scientific perhaps, but
it is just as " bracing " as man's. Her catechism is just the
same as his, and the only " bracing " path of education he

ever receives.

*

As regards the higher aims of life, it is not very bracing
to learn that a straight line lies evenly between its extreme
points, nor that the two sides of a triangle are together
greater than the third side ; and studies in Horace, Ovid, or
even in Lucretius and Plato, are not very bracing. Fe'ne'lon
and Pascal, Dante and Milton, whose books girls learn to
read, are much more elevating and strengthening. But,
because Fashion has for this age excluded Greek from a
young lady's studies, women feel themselves "snubbed."
They imagine that men's strength lies in their education. It
does not. Education never made a fool wise — rather it
gave him more ways in which to exhibit his folly. If the
lady who wrote the above were to see the young simpletons
who often take very fair honours at their Universities, she
would not put all down to education.

As for love — well, to tell the truth, men fall in love and

ON KEEPING PEOPLE DOWN 227

women accept them. We are the victims. Hawthorne was
quite right when he said, " It is a mistaken idea which men
generally entertain that nature made women especially prone
to throw their whole being into what is technically termed
love. When women have other objects in life, they are not
apt to fall in love." But is it not rather hard for men to be
accused of misunderstanding women, and of using them
unjustly, when it is to them that they have dedicated their
noblest feelings, when they have gifted them with all that is
chaste and beautiful. When they have elevated their idol
into a goddess, it is hard that she should launch her thunders
at the heads of her votaries. " I have heard men/' says the
lady above quoted, " sneer at women, and then say, * I
would not have them changed. I like them just as they
are.' Heavens ! are we always to be merely the petted
favourites of men? Will they never be just to us? I
suppose they cannot be so. Can we help hating our tyrants
from our very souls." Surely this outburst proceeds from
one who has been " snubbed."

Amongst nations, those that have been snubbed, or
fancy that they have been, are too often the most can-
tankerous, opinionated, and unjust. There are two which
offer cases in point — Ireland and America. We may at
once express our opinion strongly that the non-residence of
English sovereigns or princes in Ireland, and the apparent
neglect of that country by the Crown, have been very grave

228 THE BETTER SELF.

political errors which two or three hundred years of good
government will not perhaps undo. We were speaking
some time ago with a Connaught man, who was making
money here by his trade, and who lived comfortably in
England. He was a Fenian to the backbone, and said,
openly, that he not only hated England but the English,
although, as a rule, Englishmen had been much more just
and friendly to him than his own countrymen. "Then,"
was our natural question, " why do you so hate this country,
in which you have thriven ? " " Well, sorr," he answered,

" in the time of your Richard II. " and the Irish pro-

vincialist heaped up slights and historical wrongs of five
hundred years' standing, and flew into a hearty passion
about matters of which a well-read Englishman never heard.
Ireland was always "put upon" — never had her just position
— was always regarded, he said, as the poor relation. It
was perfectly useless to argue with him. From Richard II.
to Victoria, with the exception 1 of James II., who came and
asked her aid, all English sovereigns had neglected the " first
gem of the sea." Perhaps, of all difficulties in our own
immediate political world, the most serious is that now
before, and ever before, the Queen's Ministers — that of
governing Ireland so as to make the people content.

Americans of the United States have, so far as we can
judge, pretty much the same feeling towards us. To the
honour of George III. he welcomed the first American

ON KEEPING PEOPLE DOWN 229

ambassador from his revolted colonies with the words,
" Sir, I shall be the first loyally to acknowledge the Minister
of a Power which I have consistently opposed." Here was
no "snub;" happy had it been for us if our people had
followed the loyal example of their monarch! But for
years and years afterwards there was a feeling amongst us,
fostered and kept up by injudicious authors, that we were
something very superior to the Americans. Even the wise
Sydney Smith asked in the Edinburgh Review r , "Who reads
an American book?" The youngest amongst the nations
was treated like the new boy at school, and was taken down
many pegs. France, even in the throes of her Revolution,
believed that she alone, and her General Lafayette, had
enabled America to shake off the English yoke. She petted
the great nation like a child; Voltaire received Franklin
with the condescension of a monarch. But happily for
France her language was not the same as her pupil's. What
we do not understand cannot wound us. The same applies
to Germany, who even now snubs America very bitterly.
"What do you think, General," asked the American com-
mander, Sheridan, "of our great victories in the North? —
of Gettysburg, for instance ? That must have afforded you
some study." "Sir," answered the great strategist, Count
Moltke, "we do not study the art of war from the hasty
struggles of armed mobs ! " From his point of view — since
he carried on war as scientifically as he would play at chess

230 THE BETTER SELF.

— Count Moltke was right; but we do not hear that the
Americans resented the "snub." It was not spoken in
English.

Learned Americans, however, feel the sense of inferiority
very acutely. Professor Lowell, whose study of English
literature and whose scholarship generally would do honour
to any Englishman alive, has written a very amusing paper
on "A Certain Condescension in Foreigners" — that is towards
Americans. He owns, fairly enough, that it is not alone
England which snubs America. All the world does, more or
less. He cites a German, who says plainly, "America is
without arts, science, literature, culture, or any native hope
of supplying them. It is a people wholly given to money-
getting." He himself owns that "we," the Americans, "are
the most common-schooled and the least cultivated people

in the world The tone of the uncultivated Americans

(it is Lowell who is speaking) has too often the arrogance of
the barbarian — of the cultivated as often that of the vulgarly
apologetic. Is there a politician amongst us who dare risk
his future on the chance of our keeping our word with the
exactness of superstitious countries like England? The
patronizing manner of nations towards us is the result of
their failing to see here anything more than a poor imitation,
a plaster cast of Europe."

This is bold and candid writing. Mr. Lowell owns that
America feels the patronizing tone as a "snub." "The good

ON KEEPING PEOPLE DOWN 231

old Tory aversion of old times was not hard to bear. There
was something even refreshing in it. But," he adds, "it will
take Great Britain a long time to get over her patronizing
ways towards us. Our common language is a fatal instru-
ment of misapprehension." And, talking to "dear old.
mother-in-law" (why not "mother"?), "England," he con-
cludes : " Put on your spectacles, dear madam. Yes, we
have grown, and changed likewise. You would not let us
darken your doors if you could help it. We know that
perfectly well. But, pray, when we look to be treated as
men, don't shake that rattle in our faces, nor talk baby to
us any longer —

" ' Do, child, go to it grandam, child ;

Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig ! ' "

These instances will be sufficient, we think, to show the
dire effects of the "snub" in political life. In social life the
practice has effects as bad. Perhaps the things which most
bitterly hurt us are the slights and snubs which we have
submitted to, although they who insulted us had, perhaps,
not the slightest intention of so doing; for one of the
peculiarities of the practice is that it is most effectively
indulged in without the artist knowing or intending that he
or she snubs. Smith is left out of Brown's party — snub
No. 1. Brown intended to ask him, and his wife apologizes;
she is "so sorry," and she was aware, she tells a third person,

232 THE BETTER SELF.

how glad Mrs. Smith would have been to come, and how
she would have enjoyed herself" — snub No. 2, and more
bitter. Brown hopes Smith is not offended — snub No. 3.
Why should he be offended? One might aggravate the
snubbing, and lengthen the list almost indefinitely. And
one remembers a snub through life. We knew an eminent
lawyer, a man of many triumphs, whose most poignant
hatred was against the junior partner of the firm he was
articled to, for once telling him to enter at the clerk's door.
The old gentleman of eighty thrilled with an insult sixty-
four years old.

Women are perhaps quite unaware how often they sever
friendships and make enemies of their husbands' friends
by unconscious snubbing. We all of us remember the old
gentleman who, when we were boys, always shook hands by
extending two fingers only; and the kindly Mentor who
assured us that we were "boys, and boys were always silly."
It is to be hoped that we have long since forgiven both.
Did Lord Byron ever pardon his mother for not discovering
that he was a genius almost before he left off pinafores ?
Alas, no! One remembers these trifles with bitterness;
and perhaps the only way to excuse the feeling is to reflect
upon the littleness of poor Human Nature, while we deter-
mine never ourselves to depress or outrage the feelings of
others.

( 233 )

XXII.

GENEROUS APPROVAL.

There is a great deal of the child yet remaining in every
man, and that singular animal Man has a habit of being
governed by his weaknesses.

It is a common observation this. All truth is common
enough if we could but see it ; but this truth forces itself
upon us at a very early period. The mother praises and
chirrups to her child to keep it in a good humour, though it
has not had many months of life ; and the old nurse flatters
her patient with some tender gossip, some familiar assertion
of being and looking better, although she well knows that
he has not a month to live. Soldiers or sailors, young
curates or students of chemistry, students of poetry or the
exact sciences, love to find out that their conduct has at
least merited approval.

This desire of pleasing and of receiving a delightful
sensation from the knowledge of having pleased is very
beneficial, and is not altogether a weakness. "We are

234 THE BETTER SELF.

all excited by the love of praise," says Cicero, " and it is
the noblest spirits that feel it most." If it be a vice, it is
one of those which Rochefoucauld has said is very much
like a virtue. Peel asked to be remembered as one whose
life of statesmanship had culminated in the one fact that he
had "brought a cheap loaf to the cottage of the poor man;"
and Hood tenderly wished that on his tombstone should be
inscribed but one sentence — "He sang the Song of the
Shirt." Of course the truest philosophy, and the truest or
noblest form of religion, do equally bid us be silent about
ourselves. What we have done, we have done. Human
approval ! — the mistaken good opinion, it may be, of A, B,
and C, matters little to any one of us. What does matter
is, the unmistakable approval of our own conscience — and
of God. But we are not all philosophers, and human ap-
proval will always have its effect upon the young, and even
upon the stern middle-aged and the old. Not every one
of us is strong enough — so weak a thing is poor humanity —
to know when he is right, unless somebody else tells him so ;
or he fancies that he does not know, which amounts to the
same thing.

This humiliating confession is quite true, yet not so very
humbling to the young as it is to the old. The young
confessedly want guidance ; and in spite of the imprudence
and inaptitude of what is called a " fast," but which will,
by posterity, be stigmatized as a very slow and dull age, —

GENEROUS APPROVAL. 235

in spite of this, they naturally look for it from the old. You
may depend upon it that in those countries where the old
are despised and treated with rudeness and levity, as some
travellers say they are in America, the old people first began
the downward march by spoiling the young, and themselves
abdicating theur self-respect. Out of the Ten Command-
ments, which we know to be inspired and to be true, let the
young remember that there is one — " Honour thy father
and thy mother;" and that no nation, no people, ever grew
or continued to be great, without due respect being shown
to the old. Age and experience are not to be bought.
The young man feels that he cannot have known so much
nor have felt so much as the old. It was a pretty sight
when all the valiant warriors — Achilles, the wise Ulysses,
the king of men, Agamemnon, and the rest, arose and stood
uncovered before Nestor, the wisest, because the oldest of
the Greeks.

It was a wise and gracious thing for our Sovereign and
the Prince Consort to rise and stand, with deep respect
upon their countenances, before the many years of the great
Duke of Wellington ; great in council, great in war; whose
eighty summers had been spent in fighting more than one
hundred pitched battles for the English crown and the
English people, and of whose eighty winters very few had
not been given to thought for the cause of that land he loved
so well. And a good white head it was ; very white, bent

236 THE BETTER SELF.

forward, as ready to salute a private soldier as a general;
mostly quiet and silent, but when moved to speak, charged
with weighty words. Thackeray tells us that Major Pen-
dennis, an old man of the world, met this excellent man,
his old general, as he went through the park, and stood up
at the salute. The duke, seeing an old gentleman and an
officer, stopped and said a few pleasant, gracious words to
him, and all the day afterwards the major walked about as
if the heels of his boots were at least an inch taller. Was
the man a snob, therefore ? Not a bit of it. The approval
of his old general fired him. " Lotus sum laudari me abs
te, paler, laudato viro" — to be praised by him who is worthy
of praise, is to have one's heart moved by a noble desire
and an honest pride. The young feel it just as much as
did Major Pendennis. Every baby that lives to five years
of age has that feeling in his heart, and hungers for the
honest and open approval of his father ; and if, at the
proper time, the father will express that, if he will show his
son that his career, his feelings, his troubles, his little
triumphs and defeats, are not indifferent to him, you may
depend that in his turn the son will show respect to the
father. When, if indeed it ever is the case — which in sober
charity we take leave to doubt — when a young colonial
chick, an Australian " corn stalk," * or a Yankee farmer,

* The name they give young Australian-born children who are
very tall.

GENEROUS APPROVAL. 237

calls his father " a darned old fool," and tells him to " dry
up," one may depend on it that the fault lay at first with
the parents of the ungracious boy, although, Heaven knows,
he is himself to blame, and sorely enough too.

As a governing power, people will find that gentle and
just praise, or that which we have chosen to call open
approbation, is much better than a continual shower of
blame. It is the old story of the traveller who pulled his
cloak all the tighter about him when the wind tried to get it
from him, but who took it off and threw it away when the
warm and genial sun smiled on him.

The miserably stupid way in which some persons con-
tinually blame and scold their servants and children, cannot
be too much condemned. The children cry for bread, and
they get a stone. Their little hearts are hungering for some
honest, kindly praise, and they hear nothing but ungracious
" nagging." John has not done this, or that he has done
badly. Mary has not brought up the dinner to a minute, or
has spoilt the asparagus. But John and Mary never hear a
word of praise for the three hundred times out of the year
that everything is well done, and the dinner served most
admirably. " Please, mum," said a servant, " I can't please
you, and I wish to leave ; I'm very sorry, mum, because I
could do anything in the world for the master." And why ?
Because the master, being a kindly man of the world, had
spoken fairly, and thanked the poor, serving fellow-being

238 THE BETTER SELF.

r

when she ran on an errand for him, or brought up his boots
well blackened and polished.

It was a rule with Lord Chesterfield, a man of the world,
not half so black as some moralists have painted him, that
the least person about you deserved consideration, kind
words, gracious looks, and, in one word, politeness. " That
hanger-on of the court, that page of the back-stairs," said
he, "may do you an infinite deal of harm; he knows what
you do not know ; always be civil and obliging to him."
And in his letters to his son you find him carrying out this
systematically. He blames the boy for his faults, but he
always praises him for that which he thinks wise and right
Take care, he says, to deserve praise, and I shall always
give it you. Be learned — his lordship is writing to a boy of
only nine years of age — and you will deserve the praise of
the learned. "An ignorant fellow," he goes on to say,
" is insignificant and contemptible ; nobody cares for his
company, and he can be just said to live, that is all. There
is a very pretty French epigram upon the death of such an
ignorant, insignificant fellow, the sting of which is, that all
that can be said of him is that he was once alive, and that
he is now dead This is the epigram, which you may get
by heart : —

" ' Colas est mort de maladie,

Tu veux que j'en pleure le sort ?
Que diable veux-tu que j'en dis :
Colas vivait, Colas est mort. 1

» f*

GENEROUS APPROVAL. 239

Which we may thus put into English verse for the benefit of
those who have not had his lordship's advantages : —

Colas by sickness done to death !

You ask how is it I've not cried ?
What for ? By Jove, I'll spare my breath :

Once Colas lived, and — Colas died.

His lordship concludes his letter by assuring the little boy
that, if he turns out a dull fellow, he will earn the name of
Colas, " which I will certainly give you, if you do not learn
well ; " but he promises him a very different and more
honourable name, if he only will continue to deserve
honour.

There are two important sections of society that are very
much affected by a generous and open approbation, and
who will continue to be so affected as long as the world
exists. These are women and artists. By artists we mean
all those who have to gain their living by the exercise of
their imaginative faculties, such as authors, actors, painters,
singers of a high fame, and some few others, draughtsmen
and designers, and that large section of society which is
made, in these days to depend upon the richer and moneyed
classes.

Women, the larger, and truly the better half of man-
kind, have a love of approbation strongly marked in their
characters. You can see it in the grace they so readily
assume ; you can read it in their love of dress. You may

240 THE BETTER SELF.

call this a weakness if you will ; you may try to repress it by
making the nun cut off her hair, and cover herself with
a garment of black; or the Quakeress dress, in a poke bonnet
and the ugliest disguise that can afflict humanity. You may
try to drive out nature at the point of a bayonet, but depend
upon it she will assert her strength again and again, and
drive out the invader. The very nuns will wear their
hideous cornettes with a grace, and the Quakeress will con-
trive to look pretty. Had we not better call this love of
approbation a strength ?

You may depend upon it that that which God Almighty
has universally planted is right Man, in his impudent
follies, might take to cutting off the horns of oxen, as he
has done the ears and tails of dogs, and to repressing the
endearing sympathies of children and women, and fancy
that he was improving nature. He might quarrel with
granite for its hardness, and loam for its friable softness.
He might and does do all this, but if he be wise he will not
build his house of loam, nor sow his corn upon a floor of
granite. He had better polish the one and cultivate the
other, and study the uses of the qualities which God has
given to each " after his kind."

Now, womankind and the artistic nature love praise,
because they find in it the due reward for honest endeavour.
Lower natures may be content with money. The tradesman
may coin his soul for half-pence, and wait, with the patience

GENEROUS APPRO VAL. 241

of a spider, for the coming of a customer ; the barrister may
sell his eloquence, and be satisfied if he gains a cause and
earns the applause of the judge; the inventor may be
satisfied with an ample fortune ; but the woman who loves,
and the artist who works for the good of the world and the
love of his work, can only be satisfied, the one with the
approbation of those whom she loves, the other with the
evanescent and shadowy thing called fame.

It was ordained from the beginning, no doubt, that poor
humanity should count amongst its bitterest disappointments
and trials those borne by these two classes. How many
women are there now suffering from the want of a kindly
love, a sweet appreciation of their goodness and their self-
sacrifice. How often will not wives do tender and grateful
offices, adorn the home with flowers, and make the cottage
as neat as the nest of a bird; dress their persons with
elegance, and their faces with smiles, and find, as a reward
for this, the stolid indifference of the block, or the stupid
insensibility of the lower animal. "She was a woman,"
wrote one who knew her sex well, " a woman down to the
very tips of her finger-nails, and what she wanted was praise
from the lips that she loved. Do you ask what that meant ?

v

Did she want gold, or dress, or power? No; all she
wanted was that which will buy us all, and which so few of
us ever get; in a word, it was Love."

Yes, that is just it. It is these little signs, the fore-

R

242 THE BETTER SELF.

running of kindness, the timely notice, the generous appre-
ciation, the wise and kindly method of observing, that prove
love. Else, without these, it is a caput mortuum. When the
Grande Duchesse wishes Fritz, whom she has so madly fallen
in love with, to reciprocate her passion, and that stupid
corporal is blundering about the royal apartment in search
of a hat peg whereon to place properly his cocked hat and
feather, " Mon Dim!" cries the duchess, in an agony of
jealous chagrin, " cotnme il aimc son chapeav." That is the
reflection many a good wife makes almost before the honey-
moon is over.

" He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Little better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse."

And for years this will go on. Years of quiet agony, of
unrequited affection, of looks of love unnoticed and un-
returned ; acts of kindness unseen, of eloquent, loving words
passed over as unheard, of the very flowers of the heart of
love trampled upon and despised. This is too often the
history of marriage. Then gradually, as the caloric of the
atmosphere is absorbed by an iceberg which floats down
the German Ocean, and the flowers and fields of England
wither and grow barren at its approach, so true love cools
down, and life grows dull and worthless and barren, till
young people wonder how such and such a couple have
grown so quiet and so dulL

As it is in this life of married happiness (?) when fit

GENEROUS APPROVAL. 243

mates do not meet, so it is when the author or the artist
misses the fame that he so dearly loves. A man may live
on a good many years soured and embittered, but it is but
a kind of half-existence that he lives. It may be for him
the times are out of joint It may be that a Supreme
Artist creates time and opportunity, and from the dull
breasts of the mob evokes sympathy for his genius. But it
is certain that anti-poetic days exist, in which the very best
writer in the world would get but scant measure of justice ;
and if Pope lived at the present day, we very much doubt
if any one would listen to his silver numbers and his happy
moral truths. A satirist of the day has gone so far as to
assert that if Shakspeare lived at present, in these days of
burlesque and sensation, he would not get a living, but
would in a rage burn his plays, condemned

" To beg, with written Hamlet in his hand,
From the dull ' Row,' along the duller ' Strand ; '
On his cold hearth he'd sacrifice his scenes,
Or write for Moses or the Magazines."

How many men of genius are there amongst us now, the
history of whose life is in effect marvellously like that which
the satirist has pictured ! How many a life passes like
a day without sunshine, a year with a frosty spring, an
unkindly summer, and a stinted harvest !

The remedy in this matter is simply good nature and
tact, with less absorbing and dull selfishness. The age has

244 THE BETTER SELF.

lately grown ruder and ruder, narrower and more narrow.
Laugh, as superfine critics will, at Mr. Arnold, what we
want is more sweetness and light; and we shall get this,
not by a captious, criticizing method, but by a wise
generosity and a wholesome praise of that which is good in
the young, the impulsive, and in those who feel most
Mr. Daniel Quilp, in Dickens's story, was accustomed to
make his presence felt by cruel nips, blows, and pinches,
given to women and children. He was a spiteful dwarf,
and an idiot to boot Let our presence be felt by the
gladness it creates, and our wisdom be shown, not by the
sharpness of our blame, but by the generosity of our open
approbation.

( 245 )

XXIII.
LIKES AND DISLIKES.

One of the most cruel things, and (as all cruel things are, to
the natural and kindly human heart, difficult) one of the most
difficult things for a young man or woman to make real to
themselves is the fact that there will come a time when good
friends will part, and really honest people will stand upon
different sides of the way, opposed to each other, hating
each other, having little or nothing in common with each
other, and sacrificing friendship to principle.

All the walks of life have divergent alleys, down which,
one by one, our friends go. You love A for a rough,
manly, sensible, plain-spoken man, not refined, perhaps, not
instinctively a gentleman, but honest. By-and-by comes a
time when you defer your own opinion to this honest man's
views ; and there comes another time, too, when you find
that he holds entirely distinct views upon important matters,
which are totally irreconcilable with yours ; and you can go
no further together.

It is a very painful discovery this, to every man. In

246 THE BETTER SELF.

political life it is always occurring; in religious life it is
the same. Mr. Faber, a Protestant, wrote some years ago an
excellent little book about Tractarian secession to Rome,
and he warns earnest Anglicans about it In a few months
(or years is it?) he is Father Faber, a most determined
Romanist, pledged to his utmost to destroy the Church of
England ! How about his more stable Protestant friends ?
Here was a divergence indeed. Could friendship pardon
his secession ? Sir Robert Peel, nurtured in the old Tory
school of Protection — which the working men of France,
America, and England now seem to think the true and
wise school — is carried away by the eloquence of Cobden
and Bright and the cheap loaf argument, — certainly a
material, and wrong appeal, by the way — makes a pathetic
speech, turns round upon his friends and repeals the
Corn Laws, which he had sworn to defend. We do not
here say that he did right or wrong, but we do say that
to all his old friendships he must have bidden adieu.
He "sold" the farmers, as they said. No wonder that
they called him Judas, and that Mr. Disraeli pursued him
with bitterness. Henceforward there must have been con-
tinued antagonism between the old loyal school of Tory
and the new-fangled Conservative, just so far as they could
conserve. So, in a late juncture, when one party sought, as
some believe, desperately to wound the Church, clergymen
wrote works calling upon people to remember that there are

LIKES AND DISLIKES. 247

" principles at stake ; " and it is because they think highly
of those principles that they are so fierce and so earnest

Men of the world, without principle, are astonished at
the antagonism which religious men display. Luther's
friends, to save his life, implored him not to go and stand
his trial " You know," said they in effect, " that they will
entrap you, that their minds are made up against you : you
will be caught, put in prison, perhaps be slain." "Here
stand I," said Luther ; " and so help me God, I cannot do
otherwise. If all the tiles on the house-tops were each one
a devil " (what a simile, if we consider the curiously high-
pitched tiled roofs of the German towns at that time) "I
would go." And that grand, good man went

Take the matter, if you like, politically and historically.
Here is Brutus, the personal friend of Caesar, called by him
his son, so fond is he of him, but a lover of the old regime,
the fine old republican times, when Rome was governed by
great families, and had great liberties and great fame. Thus
Brutus, a very noble Roman, a sad, thoughtful, painful man,
pained at the political baseness and the worn-out aspect of
the times, suddenly found that Caesar, his general, his friend
and patron, was plotting against Rome. This it was that
threw them into opposite camps ; this it was that made the
dagger of Brutus run through the heart of Caesar. Brutus did
not assassinate Caesar; Caesar's own acts did the deed. " Not
that I. loved Caesar less, but Rome more," said Brutus, in

248 THE BETTER SELF.

his vindicatory speech, preserved by Plutarch, and given
with full spirit by Shakspere. So, truly, King Charles placed
# his royal head on the block by his repeated treacheries, and
by the discovery of Cromwell that his own head and those
of his friends were promised to the axe whenever Charles
should have power. So, too, our criminals do now-a-days
most certainly execute themselves. Foolish people petition
for their lives, and condone their offences ; but when a man
has placed himself in antagonism to good — when corrupt
himself he must corrupt others — the very best thing he can
do is to die. There are times when, in the true sense, it is
expedient that a man should die for the people. A leper is
{: mercifully, not mercilessly, cast out, or he would infect the

f! : whole people. It is not cruel, it is merciful to knock a mad

1 1 dog on the head. Now there are men who are infinitely

more dangerous than mad dogs ; and the sooner the world,
especially the world of silly philanthropists, learns what is
cruelty and what is mercy, the better. Christ never preached
their mercy, and His was the tenderest and kindest voice
that ever stirred the pulsation of the all-embracing air. A
student in dissection cut himself with his lancet ; he held it
up to the demonstrator. " Give it me," said that gentleman.
A clean knife and a sharp twinge did the work, and two
joints of a live finger fell by the side of the dead body.
How cruel, or how kind ? What says the Saviour in a like
case ? — " Cut it off and cast it from thee ; it is better "

'!!:

LIKES AND DISLIKES. 249

But we leave that whole passage to the consideration of
politicians, and especially for those who wish to Americanize
our criminal law, at a time when American thieves and
murderers are getting so strong, that at New York citizens
talk of appointing vigilance committees, proclaiming Lynch
law, and shooting and hanging the thieves wherever they
meet them. Which would be most merciful — Lynch law, or
a true and honestly firm law which should not err on the
side of mercy, but which, by punishing the guilty, should
protect the guiltless ?

In all such matters of opinion there will be divergence
and antagonism. The great majority of mankind is so
cowardly, that it never will face a plain duty; and if it can in
any way escape by a side door it will. Mercy seems pretty
and so kind, that many people believe that it must always
be a virtue. No virtue in life is always one ; and of this
virtue Young has told us that sublime truth —

" A God all mercy is a God unjust"

1

These antagonisms, however, proclaim the man. These are
tests of character, and most certainly separate the sheep
from the goats. The world would fall to a heap without
them. They are what mountains are to the world, and a
backbone to a fish ; a dull flat level or a mass of pulp would
be all that would be left without them. Milton declares that
it was by the agency of sin that antipathies came into the

250 THE BETTER SELF.

world ; and it follows that, if we were all angels, we should
all love that which is good; but still we doubt whether
Milton is philosophical as well as poetical in this passage, —

" Discord, first
Daughter of sin, among the irrational
Death introduced : through fierce antipathy
Beast now with beast gave war, and fowl with fowl,
And fish with fish ; to graze the herb all leaving,
Devoured each other, nor stood much in awe
Of man, but fled him, and with countenance grim
Glared on him passing."

Antipathy is as great a necessity as sympathy, and beasts
requiring flesh food demand victims to supply that food.
Nor is the behest cruel. Death must come by old age, or
hunger, or want, or by being made a prey of ; and the latter
is just as merciful as the others. The most melancholy
thing in the world — and Shakspere has, by his divine in-
tuition, appropriated the simile — is an old lion, stiff, tooth-
less, with his claws grown too long and too brittle to seize
his prey. Unable to roam abroad and cater for himself, he
lies surrounded by old bones at the entrance of his cave,
and dies a slow death of poverty, ceaseless rage, and gnaw-
ing hunger. The fate of the lamb, suddenly snapped up in
its brief and joyous youth, is happiness itself compared with
that of the old lion.

In man antipathy plays its part as well as sympathy. It
is eminently useful; and as a mere matter of advice, we

'j

LIKES AND DISLIKES. 251

should strongly urge all people to yield to both, or certainly
to consult them, not only in food or diet, dress and habit,
but in friends and acquaintance. It is an old nursed saying,
but a very true one, that if a person does not relish his food,
and does not feel that it " does him good," it will not do
him any good. So if a man does not feel drawn to another,
he had best have little to do with him. One cannot force
likes and dislikes. It is told of Dr. Chalmers that some of
the very strongest temptations that he had to contend with
were certain antipathies and aversions to people, which he
formed because of their disagreeable peculiarities. Such a
sensitiveness might be unfortunate for a Christian preacher ;
but we can readily understand that he may many a time
have repented having conquered these antipathies. At any
rate, in a long experience, we have never found any of these
false. Having no undue aversions nor prejudices, and being
perfectly ready to meet any man, all the more readily if he
was a stranger, we have often had instinctive antipathies to
men and their manners, we have seen that the face was low,
mean, and cunning,, and that the voice corresponded But
having, out of Christian duty, expelled these prejudices, and
become familiar with such friends, we have invariably had
to repent our intimacy. We had neglected a wholesome
prejudice, and we suffered from it. If in the world men
would listen a little more frequently to the voice of these
naturally implanted monitors, it would be better for them.

252 THE BETTER SELF.

It is only in the millennium that the lion will lie down with
the lamb : as it is, we should very seriously advise the lamb
to get as far away from the lion as he can. It is not that
the lion is a bad fellow in his way — of late naturalists
declare that he is a sneak, a prowling, cat-like assassin, an
arrant coward, that a good tiger will beat him all to nothing;
but he has the reputation of being the king of beasts — still,
on the whole, he is not good company for the lamb, and
that creature may be pardoned for a little natural antipathy
on his side.

The inner voice of Nature in these antipathies and
sympathies, that low, sweet voice by which we are safely
led along the path of life, Socrates heard and confessed,
and he always listened to it ; indeed he refused to escape
from prison, and to avoid death, because the voice had not
spoken.

Of course there are many antipathies which appear
ridiculous, and are unaccountable because we are not suf-
ficiently aware of the secret springs of Nature. The assertion
of Pope, that there were some men so fantastical that they
would

"Die of a rose in aromatic pain,"

is quite true. Some persons dislike the smell of roses ; some
faint and are overcome at the sight of white lilies ; and a
disease which is well known, and distinctly traced to its
cause, is hay-fever. When the hay is about, and the dry

LIKES AND DISLIKES. 253

grass is seeding, the pollen of the hay perfumes the air, and
some persons — often farmers and the children of farmers — are
stricken with a mixture of catarrh and asthma, acutely pain-
ful, affecting the mucous membrane and the brain. Pro-
bably many of the wonderful antipathies to the sight of trees,
flowers, and herbs may have as plain and distinct a cause as
this, did we but know it. But there are other instances of
attraction and repulsion in the human breast, which we can-
not so easily account for. They say that every baby, if put
quietly into warm water, which would not shock its nerves,
could swim, and would swim. We can neither affirm this to
be true nor untrue. Man can do almost anything if he so
wills it Fear sends many a good fellow to the bottom ;
but, would any baby handle a snake ? Is there not really an
antipathy been man and such reptiles, dating from the time
when God put enmity between the serpent and man. Brave
as a man may be, he would not choose to handle an adder,
nor to gambol with a cobra di capello. There is something
very repugnant in the snake tribe ; even those water snakes,
the eels, affect some persons in a strange way, and this not
through education, but from a natural feeling. Boys, who
are strange creatures, soon overcome their repugnance to
snakes, and may be seen petting the harmless yellow and
black snake of our fields ; and Hindoos will, as we know,
remove the poison-bag of the most venomous whip snakes,
and amuse themselves by putting the snake's head in their

254 THE BETTER SELF.

mouth, or letting it nestle under their arms. Some women
have a great abhorrence of worms, some of mice or of rats,
many faint at the sight of blood; and great heroes have,
even in moments of courage and trial, exhibited much that
seemed puerile and cowardly, but which was the effect of
prejudice or antipathies.

Not only are many antagonisms and prejudices perfectly
reasonable and respectable, but all honest men and women
must in their course of life be bound to undertake them.
There does come a time when we are no longer allowed to
be on a debatable ground. We must be a king's man or a
commonwealth man ; we must be on the side of vice or
virtue; we must be either for God or for the devil. Politeness
is a very nice thing, but strong eartnestness is much better.
When that time comes we must not be afraid of offending; no
temporizing will do any good ; we must declare our opinions
firmly and faithfully; and if people like to say that we are
prejudiced, and have antagonisms and antipathies, let them
say so. We need not be ashamed of confessing, even in
this day of small things, this hour of negation, this period of
the fusion and confusion of creeds, that we are antagonistic
to all that is not good, and have a very decided antipathy to
things hurtful, and especially to the devil's regiment of the
line, whether a man holds a commission in that corps, or
serves in it merely as full private.

( 255 )

XXIV.
ON FALLING OUT

In one of the most agreeable papers in the Toiler, a work
but seldom read at present, there is an account of two
ladies — Lady Autumn and Lady Springly — at Epsom Wells.
The very names of the persons and the place set you
down at the beginning of the last century (anno 1709)
in the midst of hoops, patches, flowered silks, powdered
hair, lace ruffles, toupees, side curls, swords, high-heeled
shoes, and broad-skirted coats.

The two good ladies of quality are staying at the
watering-place we have named, and at a time when Epsom
Wells was really the new queen of fashion. As the names
indicate, Lady Springly is of the new school, Lady Autumn
is of the old — a dame who knows her place and who she is ;
" a person of good Breeding, Formality, and a singular Way
practised in the last Age." All last ages have the singular
way in the eyes of their successors. What do we now think
of the Springlys of 1 709 ? Both these ladies are the wives
of baronets, " both knights," says Steele. Springly is the

256 THE BETTER SELF.

spouse of the elder, who is a baronet ; and Autumn, being a '
rich widow, has taken his younger brother, and out of her
purse endowed him with an equal fortune and a knighthood
of the same order.

This fact points to the time when rich men could not
only buy titles, but were often forced to do so, or fined for
the omission, the fine going to the king.

So then the two knights-baronet and their ladies go to
see a race at Epsom Wells. Several " damsels swift of foot
are to run for a suit of head-clothes at the Old Wells," and
the " governor of Epsom and all his court of citizens " (the
mayor that is and the clerk of the course, &c) are there
assembled. A "brisk young spark," as sparks often do,
sets fire to the glowing bosoms of the two ladies. He offers

*

to conduct Lady Springly to her seat in the stand first; and
this so disgusts Lady Autumn, who knows what precedence
is, that she rushes back to her coach, drives to her husband,
where, after the races are over, Lady Springly and all the
considerable people come to tell her the result "You
know," says the Toiler, "a premeditated quarrel always
begins with the words 'some people.' Therefore, as is
natural, the elder of these ladies begins : ' There are

people who fancy that if some people .' Hereupon

Springly takes her up : ' There are some people who fancy

that if other people ' Then Lady Autumn cries, in her

turn, * People give themselves airs ; but if other people who

ON FALLING OUT. 257

make less ado could be as agreeable as some people.'"
And so the two ladies " nag " at each other until the elder
boxes the younger one's ears ; the younger one returns the
cuff; the two brother baronets interfere to protect their
wives, and begin themselves to fight Periwigs are knocked
off, and cravats are torn ; the governor and the rest of the
citizens interpose ; and according to the slip-knot of matri-
mony, which makes it law for husband and wife to draw
together when they are attacked separately by others,
"the two ladies and their husbands fell upon the rest of
the company; and, having beaten all their Friends and
Relations out of the House, came to themselves just time
enough to know that there was no bearing the Jest after
these adventures, and therefore marched off the next day.
It is said," Steele dryly adds, "that the governor had
procured several legs of mutton (the celebrated Banstead
mutton, then, as now, famous) and other dishes, exquisitely
dressed, to bring them (the ladies) down again."

This pleasant little story will show that rich and well-
bred people quarrel, and how very much they are like low
and vulgar people when they do so. All excitement
equalizes people. Sentiment, anguish, joy, laughter, and
tears, bring us down to the same level. A pit full of kings
crying at a tragedy would be just as good or ill looking as
a pit full of 'prentice boys. So when people quarrel in a
violent way they are all vulgar alike, whether they be

8

258 THE BETTER SELF.

duchesses or dowager cheesemongers from Drury Lane.
What is true of one kind of life is true of the other. " One
touch of Nature" (and passions reveal Nature) "makes
the whole world kin."

Of all the avoidable causes of misery in this world, and
there are a great many, quarrelling is the most fertile and
the most deadly. There is truth in the old saw — " It takes
two people to make a quarrel." That is, ordinarily two
people ; but one can commence it, or " pick it," as we say.
Foxe, in his "Acts and Monuments of these Latter and
Perilous Dayes" (the Book of Martyrs) tells us to have
nothing to do "with the whole brood of such whisperers,
railers, quarrel-pickers, corner-creepers, fault-finders, and
spider-catchers, or by what name soever they are to be
titled ; " and it would be a happy thing if we could pass
them by. But the nature of man will not allow it Love,
which mends quarrels, also increases them. "There are
two kinds of quarrellers," says an old play, " your drunkards
and your lovers. Your drunkard is quarrelsome ; so is your
lover." The reason is, because they are both under the
influence of excitement, though of different kinds. The
gentlest young lady of all England will pick a quarrel with
her lover, especially if she is very fond of him, if only for
the purpose of making it up. But if the unfortunate be too
late at an appointment, if he be inattentive to her or
attentive to another, then the dogs of war are let slip

ON FALLING OUT. 259

indeed, and one of those sharp and bitter engagements
called "lovers' quarrels " takes place, followed first by a
sweet truce, and then too often by a more bitter quarrel.
For the nature of mankind is this, that he — and especially
she — will often delight in a boisterous quarrel, upon the
very basis on which peace was to be built " My darling,"
said a lover, " I will own I am in the wrong." " Oh you
are, are you, sir? Then you must be guilty if you own
that ; " and forthwith the old reproaches were renewed, and
the lady indulged in the luxury of making herself and the
one whom she loved supremely unhappy. There is a story
of a separation which took place because a husband said,
" My dear, here is a little present I have brought to rpake
you good-tempered." "Sir," was the indignant reply, "do
you dare to say that it is necessary to bribe me into being
good-tempered ? Why, I am always good-tempered : it is
your violent temper, sir ! " And so the quarrel went on.
Whatever we are conscious that we are ourselves most
guilty of, we impute to others.

What pleasure ordinary persons can find in constant
wranglings it is hard to say; possibly it may be the satis-
faction of having a pretext for saying that the persons they
disagree with ill-use them. There are many who are like
the celebrated Chuzzlewit family, which never met without
having a " regular row " all round ; and the excellence of
Dickens's picture, drawn as it was from nature, will be seen

2 6o THE BETTER SELF.

if we compare it with our own families. In our own circle,
let us say, which is of course a very peaceful one, there is
an Uncle George who objects to an Aunt Eliza, or a Mrs.
Smith-Brown, who looks down upon certain younger Browns
" who never ought to have come into the family, you know."
The firebrand of the clan, who, having a tremendous
temper, gets his or her own way, is of course unjustly
deferred to. The lamb among us who gives the party, and
who is delighted, and never so much delighted as when
he assembles them all together, usually gushes with some
homely sentiment, as " How delightful it is to be all to-
gether ! How well Aunt Eliza looks ! " " Some people may
think so," cries the firebrand, and the querulous temper
shows itself, and the quarrel begins. It is usually on the
most foolish trivial matter : a point of etiquette, the better
place, being served first at the family feast And then, as
vulgar people say, " the fat's in the fire," it blazes up, and
peace flies away. As a rule, family parties are a mistake,
especially if the family be large. Some are not asked,
others are not introduced to the chief guest ; the professing
lamb, who says, " Never mind me, old fellow, put me any-
where," is stung to madness because he has not had the
best bed-room, or the seat at the right hand of the hostess ;
the children have remarked that Mr. Smith-Brown is grow-
ing bald or getting stout, or the servants have taken away
Aunt Jane's plate — Aunt Jane has an appetite — just as she

ON FALLING OUT. 261

was about to finish the tender morsel she had saved for a

last bonne bouche. "The way I lost my fortune, sir — my

uncle had left it me — was this," said one. " I gave a family

party. Uncle was there, and all the rest of us ; all were so

civil to the old gentleman that he got bored, and I finished

the matter by giving him the liver wing of a roast fowl, when

he preferred the breast and the thigh of a boiled turkey. He

had set his heart on that turkey, and he altered his will"

Says the Psalmist, " Behold, how good and how pleasant

it is for brethren to dwell together in unity ! " It is because

it is a very rare thing, that the inspired writer makes a note

of it.

As life is constituted, these discordant interruptions # must

come, like other offences. After they have come — and woe

to those by whom they come — most of us can see how

trivial and foolish are their causes. But we all of us must

quarrel many times in our life. It is the essence of wisdom,

of course, to —

"Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel ; but being in,
Bear it, that the opposed may beware of thee."

And upon reflection, if we are wise, we shall find that the
best thing we can do when we are in a quarrel is to get out
of it as soon as we can. Generally, like wars, which are
quarrels on a large scale brought to a bloody head, they
offer many times opportunities of escape. When the Franco-

262 THE BETTER SELF.

German war was declared there were two several occasions
upon which Napoleon III. might have retired with honour:
one, when the Prince of Hohenzollern withdrew from his
candidature to the throne of Spain ; one, when the King of
Prussia gave a pacific answer to the demands of France. A
peaceable sovereign is always a wise one. Had Napoleon
been really wise, he might have concluded with merely a
show of war, and have plumed himself and the French
nation on his magnanimity and his bloodless victory. As
it is, he and the nation had to put up with many disastrous
defeats, and the Napoleon of Peace was only about as
peaceful as that character in Charles Reade's novel, who
cries "I am a man of peace ; and, damme, I'll punch any
man's head for a halfpenny."

Quarrelsome and angry people are unlike iron ; they are
worse, says Fuller, " to be wrought upon when they are
hot" And such persons are generally unjust, full of self-
seeking and self-opinion, arrogant, and not seldom unfor-
giving. When two such come together as husband and
wife, their whole life will be poisoned by senseless, vain
wrangling ; for to quarrel with any one is a grave offence.
There is a wise observation of Goldsmith's which should
be remembered by such irritable persons. "Whatever,"
he says, "mitigates the woes and increases the happiness
of others is a just criterion of goodness; and whatever
injures society at large, or any individual in it, is a criterion

ON FALLING OUT. 263

of iniquity. One should not quarrel with a dog without
reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts
of morality."

Irritable and querulous persons are just as much to
be avoided as small pox or scarlet fever. There are mental
epidemics, which are terribly dangerous, and quarrelling is
one of them. We are almost sure to catch it if long ex-
posed to its contagion. A man should wisely avoid a
woman as a wife who has been brought up in a narrow
family with mean and unhappy views of things, who are
ever ready to envy and find fault with their neighbours,
and to quarrel among themselves. Such a family is to
be avoided, and so too is the tempting part of interfering
in a "row," especially if we do not accurately know its
origin. Whatever side we take in such a case, we are
sure to offend one party, and most likely both, for the
" benevolent neutral " never espouses either side as warmly
as he might do. Gay's homely verse should ever be a
beacon light for all peace-loving people —

" Those who in quarrels interpose,
Must often wipe a bloody nose,"

especially if the dispute be a family one, between relations
or between husband and wife.

But after all that has been and will be said against this
iniquitous folly, there is much to be said, by all of us, too,
against the cold-blooded, peaceable fellow who never " gets

264 THE BETTER SELF.

into a row," submits to everything, and keeps himself cool
while others are at the boiling point. No doubt it is scrip-
tural to advise a man when he is slapped on one cheek to
turn the other, and if he is robbed of his coat to let the
thief take his cloak also. Practically we believe that the
wisdom of such a course would be vindicated; but the
world is by far too selfish and uncivilized to bear the
practice. What man of us is there who would, after a
thief had stolen his wrapper from his hall, open his ward-
robe and say, " Sir, behold, there are my waistcoats, my best
black coat, and my go-to-meeting trousers." What generous
people like is one who can quarrel when occasion serves,
and, after expressing himself warmly, can easily forgive —
a man who, like the noble Brutus, " carries anger as the
flint does fire," but never shows the gleaming spark until
sharply struck. And there are some wise men who have
vindicated, as we often try to do, the right to be angry.
" Be angry, and sin not," is Holy Writ ; and quaint Andrew
Fuller says that " anger is one of the sinews of the soul ; he
that wants it hath a maimed mind, and, with Jacob, sinew
shrunk in the hollow of his thigh, must needs halt Nor
is it good to converse with such as cannot be angry, and,
with the Caspian Sea, never ebb nor flow." If, therefore,
occasion serve to have a quarrel with any one, the best plan
is to do it and have done with it Do not nurse your wrath
to keep it warm. Do not chew the cud of bitter revenge,

ON FALLING OUT. 265

and when your opponent has forgotten the cicumstance, pop
out upon him like a masked mitrailleuse and blow him to
pieces with a hundred reproaches. This is unfortunately
too often the manner of women, and a fruitful cause of
matrimonial misery. Anger kept till the next morning is like
the manna of the Jews, or shell-fish at Midsummer. It
will putrefy and corrupt; it will injure and poison; it
rankles in the mind of the angry one. " Let not the sun
go down upon your wrath/' is merciful as well as spiritual,
for as one we have quoted says — he cites from Ephes.
iv. 27, though not in the exact words — "He that keepeth
anger long in his bosom giveth place to the devil And
why should we make room for him, who will creep in too
fast of himself ? "

Why indeed? The miserable result of undue anger
and quarrelling, a result always to be deplored, and yet
always sure to come with constant indulgence, is, that we
sometimes, in a moment, and when least thought of, do
what we never forget, always regret, and never can undo.
At first we are bitter and reproachful, but we rule our
tongues and the breach is healed; the divergence again
brought home, the gulf bridged over. We are like Samson :
we fall, our secret is known, and our hair cut, but it grows
again, and our strength returns; but after some bitter
quarrels we in our blindness are like Samson with his eyes
put out Our hair may grow again, but our eyes never.

266 THE BETTER SELF.

And so it is with a friend : a slight disturbance of love,
a disagreement, a coldness, and angry quarrel — and the
word is said, seldom forgiven, never forgotten, and the
friend is lost for ever !

( 267 )

XXV.

PRETENSION AND SENTIMENT.

Neither of these are very openly prominent in the present
day ; in fact, the vice is to pretend to be without pretence,
and to affect to despise sentiment. But we need scarcely
say they are as powerful as ever, especially in religious
or serious families, and they will be for ever powerful.
There is always a sneaking kindness for a neat sentence.
When Joseph Surface, in the comedy, has hidden Lady
Teazle behind the screen, her husband, little knowing the
cheat, declaims to him on the beauties of sentiment. " The
heart," says the hypocritical Joseph, "that is conscious of
its own integrity is ever slow to credit another's treachery."
Thus he pretends to repudiate the notion that his innocent
brother can be the offender of whom Sir Peter is in search.
" Oh ! " cries the unsuspecting husband, " true ; but your
brother has no sentiment — you never hear him talk so."
When, however, the screen falls, and the silly but not guilty
wife is discovered, and the hypocrite is unmasked, Sir Peter
does not think so much of fine speeches. "The man,"

268 THE BETTER SELF.

cries Joseph, endeavouring to palliate his guilt, "who shuts

out conviction by refusing to hear " " O d your

sentiment ! " cries the enraged knight, and hurries away
from the convicted hypocrite.

That scene of the dramatist is so true to life, that we
have occasion to recall it every day. People have, for
some time, learnt to " damn " sentiment very heartily ; and
yet on the library shelves of almost every country house we
have " The Beauties of Sentiment, " " The Man of Feeling,"
"The Sentimental Journey," and other works in which sen-
timent plays a very pretty part To be sure, also, we have
some authors of the present time who have taken sentiment
under their care, and have given us sentimental highway-
men and philosophic murderers, who rob a man with a neat
sentence, and murder him with a smile of pitying and
supreme philosophy. When Eugene Aram defends himself
for murdering Daniel Clarke, he does it sentimentally.
" What," he seems to say, " what (oh, you mean hunks !)
have you to do with riches? I love the Beautiful, the
Free, the Lovely (all with big letters). I bow to the Shrine
of Knowledge. I am a pupil of Philosophy ; you are a
dense and stupid Ass."

And as the about-to-be-murdered person very selfishly
objects to give up all his moneys, the sentimental murderer
kills him. Of course, as Thackeray says with a sneer, the
above is a nice doctrine for the worshippers of the Beautiful

PRETENSION AND SENTIMENT. 269

and the True ; but it does not do for the world. The
mere plodder, who makes his money honestly, objects to
have it knocked out of his hand by a conceited prig, who
fancies he can use it better than he can. Again, senti-
mental highwaymen rob a Mr. Jones, who is a very rich
fellow, to relieve Mr. Brown, who is a very poor fellow;
and somehow consider that they are doing God service,
forgetting the words spoken by the prophet, " I, the Lord,
hate robbery for a burnt-offering."

From Robin Hood downwards this seems to have been
always the case. A man does wrong and invests it with
"sentiment;" and the common people, who (bless their
innocent hearts !) always find something to excuse sinners,
believe in them ; nay, people quarrel about the precedence
and importance of their rogues : —

" A famous man was Robin Hood,
The English ballad singer's joy ;
But Scotland has a thief as good :
She has, she has her own Rob Roy.*

And so, Red Robert and Robert, Earl of Huntingdon,
in ballad history, dispute the headship of roguery ; whereas,
in police cases of the present day, they would have figured
as a couple of disreputable sheep-stealers and cattle-lifters,
who deserved hanging. Sentiment, in fact, has made
thieves heroes of romance before now, and will do so
again.

1

270 THE BETTER SELF.

What is this sentiment, then? Sentiment is feeling,
and as a rule is opposed to reason. A man who acts by
sentiment acts as a woman, and reasons, not from his
head, but from his heart Now, when the man's heart is
better than his head, which is not an uncommon case at
all, this is very well ; but when a man's heart is deceitful
beyond measure, when his opinion is biased unfairly by
his feeling, when self enters into all his calculations, it
is as well to call in the aid of reason ; for, though it
may seem paradoxical, some of the most sentimental
people have been the most cruel and terrible. The sen-
timentalism of Rousseau nobody would dispute ; and yet
can any one hold up such a man to anything but con-
tempt and detestation? Diderot, again, was a man of
sentiment; and Robespierre also had intense and acute
sentiment ; so good that, when young, he was a continual
advocate for the poor, and without taking any money
from them, he spent days and nights in their service.
At last sentimentalism, logically produced, drove him
into the most cruel excesses. "We must not mind
cracking eggs," said he, "when we want an omelet;" and
truly he cracked eggs enough, if we count the heads he
cut off.

With us Sterne, the author of "The Sentimental Jour-
ney," is the representative man of this kind of literature, and
we are told that he cared more for a dead ass than he

PRETENSION AND SENTIMENT. 271

did for a live wife or mother. But Sterne is a much
misrepresented man. Although he was one of the greatest
masters of thought, suggestion, and style that ever lived,
a bitter envy has pursued him, and the critics seem to
hate him because they cannot understand him. Dickens,
again, is a thoroughly sentimental writer. Tom Pinch, the
Nicklebys, brother and sister, the Cheerybles, the Ded-
locks, and a whole tribe of his people, from Trotty Veck
upwards, are sentimentalists ; his very ghosts are senti-
mental. All his characters are either sentimentalists or
pantomimic, or both, which is frequently the case. Even
old Scrooge, when he gets rid of his sentimental miserdom,
becomes sentimentally generous, and sends a little boy to
buy the biggest turkey and the biggest pudding, and so
on, to give it to the poor family he has been starving
by under-paying the father. Sentiment is not very healthy.
Mrs. Dombey runs away with Mr. Carker, not because
she loves him, for she hates him with a most bitter hate,
but because she dislkes the cold manners of her too
respectable husband. In fact she cuts off her nose to
spite her face, which is the very essence of sentiment
Stupid as this feeling is, it is all-powerful. It would be
absurd and untrue to say that people like Mrs. Dombey
have not existed, when we meet with them every day.
There are an immense number of sentimental murderers,
people with spoiled tempers, whom a good whipping,

272 THE BETTER SELF.

at most ten good whippings when young, would have
cured. Thus Mr. George Victor Townley,* finding that
a young lady does him grievous wrong in first accepting
and then rejecting him, quietly — like an educated gentle-
men as he was-ascertains this from her own lips, then
cuts her throat, follows the body home, sentimentally
weeping, takes a meal with the grandfather while the police
are sent for, is condemned for murder, and sentimentally,
as we hold, pardoned or sentenced for life ; and finally,
knowing that the law won't kill him, kills himself by
jumping down a well staircase in prison. The man as a
scholar and a son was good. He was sober, temperate,
and chaste ; a firm lover as we have seen, honest, indus-
trious, patient, able to live on little, an admirable citizen,
and a gentleman. He wept as he slew his victim ; gave
no man trouble, aided the police and the warders, knew
exactly where, how, and what he was doing anything for,
but was unable to discriminate that the woman who had
first encouraged, and then had thrown him off, was worth-
less, and that he for her was throwing a valuable life away.
Had he at school been taught patience, and a proper
control over disappointment, his sad history would never

* Some of our readers may remember that Mr. Townley was a
gentleman of position and education, who deliberately murdered his
sweetheart, gave himself up, and as deliberately had tea with the
girl's grandfather while a policeman was being fetched.

PRETENSION AND SENTIMENT. 273

have been written, nor would he have rushed into the
presence of his Maker with two murders on his head, —
those of two whom he best loved, himself and his sweet
heart

Sentiment, Skinner says, is a new word, but it is not
so now nor was it then. Chaucer uses it as we use it,
or rather as we ought properly to use it "I here this
endite of no senlimente, not as my own thoughts, not as
my own invention, but from the Latin." That is, he did
not arrange and think out the plot of the story, nor was
it born of his heart and feeling, but he re-lated from the
Latin. Derived from sentir, to perceive, to feel, the
sentiment grew to mean rather an intuition than a cold
effort of reason. And in this way a sentimental passion,
a love for what we admire, was always presumed to be
a grand one. Not to the coldly reasoning world, not to
the jargon of the schools, nor the stilled and quieted
murmur of the priests, would all listen; the young and
the ardent still obeyed the dictates of the heart, and still
.believed that which it taught them. And they were in
many cases right

" Thanks to the human heart, by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, its fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. "

So sings Wordsworth; and who will dare to gainsay his

T

274 THE BETTER SELF.

teaching? Poets will always be sentimental in the true
sense ; if they were so in the false sense they would cease
to be manly.

True feeling of this kind is always delightful. Thus
Mackenzie is quite right when he says, " In books, whether
moral or amusing, there are no passages more captivating
than those delicate strokes of sentimental morality which
refer our actions to the determination of feeling." The
romantic school, the very essence of tragedy, does this. It
is by the heart and feeling, not through the head, that we
are terrified, appalled, spell-bound, and entranced at a
tragedy. What to us are the wrongs of Desdemona, and
the slights and scorns of Hamlet, but thorough sentiment?
In reality, did we, like the Hindoo and the contemplative
Brahmin, deaden every feeling in Positivist Quietism, we
should accept everything as good. "Let God govern the
world," we should say; "let this man die or that man reign
in glory; let the rogue flourish, and the villain rule; an after
life will make these odds all even. There is no paid lawyer
in the court of God ; there each must plead his cause, and
the damning acts of life will bear witness against him." But
we are enlisted on the side of that which we think or know
to be good ; we are mere puppets in the hands of the philo-
sophic Master Shakspere, who knows how to mix the finest
reflections with the most subtle sentiment. But in real life,
that which enlists us on the side of the virtuous man in the

PRETENSION AND SENTIMENT. 275

play, enlists us on what we believe to be the right side.
While the actor declaimed, says a modern verse writer —

" Among the crowd new hero feelings ran,
And the slave listen'd till he rose a man."

But while the political writer is exercising his pen, we are
entangled in the meshes of the sophistry he spreads, and take
our side without exactly knowing whether he is right or not.
In the Russian War of 1852-4 the hearts of the whole people
were enlisted on the side of the Turks and against the
Russians through mere sentimentalism. We do not say that
it was not right. Most of us felt and thought and wrote
on the side of our countrymen, and many rose early, and ran
with others full of ardent feelings, by the side of the Guards
as they marched over Waterloo Bridge. What a shaking of
hands there was ! How the officers kissed the dear girls
who came to see them off ! and how the grim old sergeants
gazed with moist eyes at the boys and girls who would
never greet them more !

The time is past now. Those gallant men lie dead
beneath Crimean snow. Somebody blundered and hun-
dreds were starved. The men and officers fought like heroes,
shoulder to shoulder ; and nothing was more touching than
the constant instance of an officer jumping out, running
along the open, and carrying off a wounded soldier from
under the fire of the enemy, or of a soldier so carrying his
officer. Perhaps it was well that we so fought, and spent so

276 THE BETTER SELF.

many millions; but there are many acute reasoners who
believe that, had we listened to Russia, and put pressure on
the Turk, we might now have been governing Egypt wisely
and well, and employing thousands of our poor, giving the
fellahs and native Christians sound and wholesome laws,
repressing the Moslem; while the Russians, seated on the
Bosphorus, would have made Constantinople the seat of the
Patriarch, restored St Sophia to what it was built for (a
cathedral), would have driven the Turks into Asia Minor,
and have saved the long threatened attack upon our Eastern
empire. But the war was inevitable, in spite of the grief
of Lord Aberdeen, the English Prime Minister, and our
rulers, because of the sentiment of the people. So was it
in that other extraordinary 'entente, wherein, by the death of
one million excellent and intelligent whites in America, the
disruption of society, and the inception of a military auto-
cracy, three millions of not intelligent blacks were given to
an abused freedom, and a very probable starvation. The
South lost the battle because it did not appeal to the senti-
ment of Europe by freeing the slaves. The North did play
that card, and won.

No one can afford to despise sentiment ; but most of us
despise sentimentalism. " Since the close of what we may
call the Byronic period of our literature," says Douglas
Jerrold, " there has been an increasing reaction against the
school of sentiment This reaction, we conceive, is at pre-

PRETENSION AND SENTIMENT. 277

sent carried to excess. In the recoil from the morbid and
falsely heroic are we not falling into the opposite error of
considering everything morbid that aspires to be heroic ?"
. . . . " Men who fight the battle of right without cal-
culating the odds, women who rate men by their manhood
rather than by their bankers' accounts are, thank God,
nowise rare. By a law of natural magnetism, they draw
round them all that is best and healthiest in the sympathies
of others; while in themselves they have the abiding youth
which creates joy where it does not find it, and gains strength
and trust from adversity." Excess of this emotion, which is
its bane, has its origin in laziness ; "the hand of little em-
ployment hath the more delicate sense," and the head which
is little exercised with knowledge will run into the strangest
vagaries. One could make the ladies of a village weep by a
picture of the nakedness of the benighted savage, or of the
sad condition of the poor things because they had not flannel
jackets and pocket-handkerchiefs; but the knowledge that
niggers in their natural state are a great deal too hot in their
bare skins, and dispense generally with the finical custom of
blowing their noses, might correct the effusion of maidenly
tears. If people had clearness of vision and faith in the
Over-ruling Power, there would be but little foolish sentiment
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb ; and there is no
position in life that has not its advantages and its pleasures.
Perhaps the nigger, when he sees the white man at the Line

278 THE BETTER SELF.

panting with the heat which blacks enjoy, pities him; cer-
tainly he is sentimental over our white skins, for he makes his
devil of our colour, as if the complexion of Apollo were an
odious livery ! When Lady Mary Wortley Montague went
into the Turkish harem, the wives of the Turk crowded
round the lady, and playing, laughing, and full of fun, hurried
her to the bath, where she saw so many beautiful forms that
she quite forgot the faces of those beauties who urged her
to bathe with them. But, in undressing her, they came to
her stays, and recoiled with horror ! Then it was that they
wept and grew sentimental. In this prison of iron and
whalebone, then, it was that European husbands of the West
confined their hapless wives ! Nothing that the lady could
do could save her from this sentimental pity. Who was
most in the right? It is not difficult to decide. Lady Mary
preferred travelling abroad — one wife with one husband, and
shutting up her ribs with stays ; the Sultanas were content
with being shut up at home — many wives with but a small
share of one husband. Knowledge may correct sentiment,
for the degree of human happiness depends upon ethical
rules; but sentiment can also correct knowledge, for the
tenderest feelings arise from the heart.

( 279 )

XXVI.
FALSE PRETENCES.

A lady of education and intelligence lately offered to a firm
of publishers some moral tales for children. The tales, we
presume, were neither very striking nor very original, and
would never have been cited here but for one memorable
plea in their favour. The lady was a Roman Catholic,
the publishers strictly Protestant ; but that had nothing to
do with the stories or their rejection. The plea that the
lady urged, and that the bookseller looked on with great
favour, was this : " My dear sir, there is not one farthing's-
worth of religion in the stories at all ! — not a sentence, not
a word It is all purposely excluded."

" Exactly so, madam," said the publisher ; " an excellent
idea. I shall most gladly place the work in the hands of
my reader. We are deluged with religious stories. We
want something else, moral and pretty, but without Scrip-
ture citations."

" Precisely, my dear sir, — my own idea," cried the lady.
" You see, I found out all this from seeing many children

280 THE BETTER SELF.

and finding out how they loathe all this. A little boy came
to his mother the other day with a religious story-book and
said, i Oh, mamma, do give me another book.' ' Why, my
dear, it's all about the Sav ' ' Yes, I know it is/ whim-
pered the child, 'and that's why I hate it Tm sick of
Jesus P"

A dreadful story, you say; yet a true one, and not
dreadful. We must face the truth. Here is a little child
using the same thought, almost the same words, as did
Voltaire on his deathbed. Voltaire, an abbe*, a priest
himself, nay a bishop, some say, turns away from the offi-
ciating and officious priest who pesters him at his bedside,
and almost in the agonies of death cries out, " I'm sick and
tired of this perpetual cry ; ne parlez pas .de cet infame /"
The allusion was to our Saviour. No one has attempted
to vindicate Voltaire's last saying, though we might easily
presume that the philosopher said enfant (child) instead
of infame, — the Mighty and Righteous Judge, co-equal with
the Father, the Pillar of Fire, the Protecting Gloud, the
Eternal One, who was from the beginning, being throughout
Roman Catholic countries symbolized as a little child on
the arm of his mother, and being too often thought of as a
child.

But whatever Voltaire said, it is very well known that
he rejected the Church, and would not by any means listen to
her ministration. But why should a child sicken at a story,

FALSE PRETENCES. 281

the most wonderful, romantic, touching, simple, beautiful, and
full of the truest touches of genius in the world ? A popular
author, who often refers to it, as an unwavering believer,
seldom does so without drawing tears, — sweet, humble, grate-
ful, tears. Voltaire himself more than once, like John Stuart
Mill, drew a very flattering picture of the Saviour. His more
learned disciple, Renan, is filled with admiration of the
character. No man, indeed, can know all the panegyric
which Christian bishops and philosophical doubters have
lavished on the Divine character; and indeed, truly pre-
sented, to man, it has in it all that man can love. The
hatred to it can only arise from a mistake — a mistake the
most serious in the world — and that is the terribly common,
every-day error of teaching religion upon false pretences,
and thrusting, as preachers often do, false views of goodness,
false rewards, false tales and stories, upon the world,
especially upon the world of the young.

This pious fraud seems to be inherent in humanity.
Poor Humanity ! it is as weak as a sick woman ; and having,
as it supposes, a bad bargain, seeks to make the best of it.
" Pious frauds " — the gist of which is that it is legitimate to
tell a lie to back up the truth — arose with the priests ; but
they are by no means confined to them. Here, step
forward, honest William Hogarth, prime genius of England's
painters, perfect Englishman, sound Protestant, most honest
good man as you are, and we know you are, and say how it

282 THE BETTER SELF.

was you ever gave to the world that pious fraud of yours
the industrious and idle apprentices. You knew well enough
that the tares grow with the wheat till the harvest, and that
an industrious man does but seldom become Lord Mayor,
nor does the idle rogue always get sentenced to the gallows.
A more sceptical and acute, though an infinitely less-gifted
artist, did a series of badly drawn but cleverly conceived
sketches, in which the idle cheat becomes Lord Mayor, and
the industrious, honest boy is reduced to the workhouse.
One is just as true as the other. " Goodness and greatness
are not means, but ends." If you are good and great upon
fifty pounds a year — and you may be very good and very
great and just so poor — you have your reward ; you do not
want to be made Lord Mayor, or alderman, or a baronet, or
anything else. So again in these pious tales, in which you
hear of little children writing letters to Jesus Christ, and of
good men being rewarded with roast legs of mutton, what
are they but false pretences ? They are not a whit better
than Alban Butler's "Lives of the Saints," in which it is related
that poor St. Rosalia, having given away her old shoes
to a beggar, the Blessed Virgin Mary put her hand out of
heaven and gave her a magnificently-jewelled pair ! Let a
child find out that fraud, and what faith will he have ? So
about punishment : Mrs. Stowe relates of a child, that he
had a great temptation to swear, and he did so. Tom
retired to a room and said the word " d ! " and felt

FALSE PRETENCES, 283

rather disappointed that the earth did not open, and that
the Lord took no immediate notice of his sin. Perhaps
Mrs. Stowe could not in fewer words have more acutely
pointed out the origin of much of the scepticism of the
world. This continual assertion that right is always might,
and that goodness comes off with the largest share of the
apple-pie, is as harmful as it is false. What is true of the
world is perhaps this — that as a rule, although excellence in
art and success in trade often accompany goodness, yet the
best people are the worst paid, the most tried, and the least
rewarded of all. Pope, lame as he sometimes was at a
moral argument, has had skill enough to tell us why : —

" But sometimes Virtue starves while Vice is fed.
What then ? Is the reward of Virtue bread ?
That Vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil,
The knave deserves it if he tills the soil.
What nothing earthly gives, nor can destroy,
The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy,
Is Virtue's prize. A better would you fix ?
Then give Humility a coach and six. . . .
Vain, foolish man, will Heaven reward us there
With the same trash mad mortals wish for here ?
Go, like the Indian, in another life
Expect thy dog, thy brother, and thy wife."

This satire is strong enough to awaken even the most
stupid ; and yet how many are there who devote themselves
to a good life, with the immediate or ultimate expecta-
tion of an adequate reward — who embrace honesty, not

284 THE BETTER SELF.

on account of its intrinsic goodness, but as a policy which
pays !

There are numbers of people who habitually deceive
children with promises of enjoyment and reward, which
they know will never come, and thus sow seeds of doubt at
the very earliest age. Robert Hall, who was one of those
truthful persons who hated a lie, once reproved a young
mother very severely, because in putting a little baby to bed,
she put on her own nightcap, and lay down by it till it went
to sleep. " Madam," said the eloquent preacher, " you are
acting a lie, and teaching the child to lie." Yes, and when
the child had lost its trust in that mother, it had learnt the
miserable habit of doubting, which it would never get over.
It was in vain that the mother pleaded that the child would
not go to sleep. " That," said Hall, " is nonsense. Properly
brought up, it must sleep. Make it know what you want ;
obedience is necessary on its part, but not a lie on yours."

Going on in life, we cheat ourselves over and over again
with false pretences, as a drunkard who stops at a fourth
public-house and treats resolution because he has manfully
passed three others. A man runs into a lawsuit with his
neighbour, or upsets a whole community about a foot-path
right of way, or he gives himself airs at church or chapel,
and fancies that he is only asserting his rights, and that it is
proper pride. There are a dozen little ways in which little
vices creep up our sleeves under false pretences, and we all

FALSE PXETEXCES. .*$>

the time know them to be false, but affect to believe them to
be true. Like the man who said he drank —

44 Because Vm wet, because I'm dry.
Or rnnv other reason why,"

we have always an excuse for a neglected duty. •' Hy the
way, why were you not at such and such a meeting? 11 asks
one. "These roughs have cut down the workhouse ten,
bread, butter, and meat; and if you and two or throe other*

had been there " Well, we know the excuse. Does

not every Englishman abuse the jury system bemuse of
stupid juries, but does not every man jack of us try to
escape service? How many times have we tried to punish
bribery at elections ! — and yet at every election there lire
hundreds of hands held out for the bribe. And what hilse
pretences are given both for giving and taking the money,
from five pounds for a pair of baby's shoes, to a fee of fifty
pounds to a doctor for attending a patient who is not nU k ;
from buying a canary bird to giving away a Mtaain yiu hi I
There are a thousand ways of bribery, which our j/roviw i/d
brethren laugh at Some men get m u*cd to thi*, thai 1I117
think they are doing a noble action in <2Joling a mutt out ol
his vote. " Oh, do let me go and can van* for you ! " *ai/| a
young lady to a candidate, " It h m<h Uttt, arid I /aw UH
such lots of fibs \ n "There i* nothing Jik* lyiuf/r," v*h\ Mr
Fagg in the comedy ; "but a i?j*A tU: tw/fo ♦// \* %u\t\*ttu*\

286 THE BETTER SELF.

Whenever I draw a bill with one lie, I take care to endorse
it with another."

As for false pretences in life, they are innumerable.
How many very respectable families take in, let us say, the
Saintly Sanctum, not because they read the work, but
because it looks so well on the table ! How many people
go to church or. chapel simply because it is highly respect-
able ! " My dear," said a wife to her husband, " I never
saw such a man as you are, playing with the children, and
walking so fast ! People will never think that we have been
to church ! " — " That let the cat out of the bag," cried the
husband. " Well, and what is the use of going to church if
we don't have the credit for it ? " is the retort " What will
the world say ? " is the thought which makes people dress in
one way, wear ugly hats, chignons, live in expensive houses,
worry themselves about other people, and, in short, indulge
in false pretences.

Between lovers and friends these abound. A likes B,
and walks and talks with him. Umph ! does he really like
B, or does he fancy that B likes him? or are they both
useful to each other? Some people are very fast friends
because they meet to talk to each other about themselves.
They call this unburthening their minds. They delight in
abusing all the world, with a secret reservation of their two
dear selves. The very bond of friendship is the thinking
the same and feeling the same. At school two little chaps

, FALSE PRETENCES. 287

will get a thrashing together, and while feeling their bumps
and drying their eyes, a reciprocity of feeling will spring up.
Little Benjy Jones takes to little Tommy Smith, because
Jones is the dullest boy in the class except Smith : there is
a community of feeling, and the two little fellows persuade
themselves that it is friendship ; but let Smith get on in the
school — and very dull boys rise sometimes — and Jones's
heart is stung with jealousy, and the friendship ends.

As for love, that is a sacred name, a reality, in spite of
prosaic days ; a necessity, notwithstanding the thirst for
gold ; a holy thing, in spite of incredulity, want of nobility,
and the folly of a thousand burlesques ; and yet how much
of it arises from mere false pretence! " Two young fools, "
says Dr. Johnson, "are shut up in a room together, and
told that they are to marry, and fancy that they are in love."
That is when young people marry to order of parents ; but
in ordinary cases, the beginning of love is one of the silliest
and least logical of a man or woman's actions. J look* at
E while at church ; and E says, " What could he mean by
looking at me?" E stares at J in some alarm ; and J says to
his friend, or to himself, " By Jove ! that girl looked a* \(
she were interested in me," and look* back again. So the
entanglement begins. Shakspere, who knew the yn&Aon
thoroughly, as he knew all the human heart, explain* aJJ
this in a charming .v>ng, of which the mi viable miviV; of
words and drifting of meaning have made the commoT^/./

288 THE BETTER SELF.

lose the sense. Will not five out of ten of our readers be
rather surprised to find that Fancy in this song means Love ?

" Tell me where is Fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head ?
How begot, how nourished ?

It is engender'd in the eyes,
With gazing fed ; and Fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies :

Let us aU ring Fancy's knell ;

I'll begin it, — Ding, dong, belL"

Any one who has heard this song properly harmonized, and
sung by men, will say at once that it is the perfection of
lyrical beauty; but more than that, it is the perfection of
philosophy; it is truth. Love (fancy) between man and
woman begins in the eye, and dies there, where it lies —
observe the pun — directly it is false, or rather directly its
falseness is discovered. After that, you may ring Love's
knell. But in the meantime J is quite taken in with E.
Like Benedick, he believes the girl loves him; and he
cries, " Love me ! why it must be requited ! " and he
returns the fondness. When married people begin to com-
pare notes, they frequently quarrel as to who fell in love
first ; and each often dies in the belief that it was not
entered into on the other side. If begun so loosely, can we
wonder that marriages are so often unhappy? The great
wonder is that loyalty and affection can really base them-

FALSE PRETENCES. 289

selves upon such slender foundations, and grow up straight
and true, as they do in a thousand English homes. But
the result is corrected only for those who are true. There
are others who believe deceit to be the natural language of
love. "All is fair in love, war, and politics," is the silly
old cry; as if we could banish honesty from anything
without hurt to ourselves ! Simple honest truth, however,
is better than all the false pretences in the world. The man
in Germany who has made a fortune by forging Bass's
labels, and selling Lagerbier for English pale ale, and the
thief who marks French cutlery with Sheffield trade marks,
may grow rich ; but the riches are but Dead Sea fruit, and
will turn to dust and ashes. But these are open sins : the
most difficult to be guarded against lie within our own
hearts. How often do we deceive ourselves ! How often
do we gild over a fault with a noble motive ! How often
do we call rashness bravery, impudence boldness, folly the
levity of youth, respectable hypocrisy genuine piety ! How
many times in the week do we check ourselves in our
progress towards the Better Self ! How often, in fact, are
we all the victims of False Pretences !

u

290 THE BETTER SELF.

XXVII.

PEACE.

It is what we each strive for. It is the end all have in view.
It is what every conqueror goes to war for; what we all
quarrel and fight for ; the sum of our ambition ; the answer
to our prayers. If we cannot get it mentally we at least
desire it bodily.

A physician wrote, now some years ago, to the Times,
pleading with great force for quiet in London streets.
According to him, we are sending dozens of people every
year to the lunatic asylum through our noises and racketing
tumult There is no time to sleep. The broughams and
cabs which convey the pleasure seekers from the theatre
and the evening party keep up the noise till about three
in the morning, —

" Home from the ball flash jaded beauty's wheels ; "

and at that time the market carts begin to pour in ; and
then post carts, early dust and mud carts, take up the
noise ; till at six the cabs begin to stir, rattling away with

PEACE. 291

enthusiastic excursionists and busy bagmen to the early
train, while from the train itself the piercing whistle is
heard, and the snort and grumble of the distant engine
re-echoes in the streets and squares.

Next' we have the watercresses, the milk sellers, and
other early industries, some eccentric street tradesmen and
women shrieking out " 'ilk," or " 'meat," with a sudden
burst, as a poor man complained, as if a penknife had been
thrust into their backs and had forced out the ejaculation.
After that there is no peace. In summer the water carts,
at all times long strings of empty or full carts and waggons,
calculated with immense ingenuity to make as much noise
as they possibly can upon newly macadamized roads, which
the parish will not roll smooth, rumble up and down at a
jog trot, the drivers standing up and yelling out a rude song
or crashing their whips like pistol shots. Next come the
boys with iron hoops, and when they see a little dog or an
old lady they raise a wild Indian scream which shatters the
nerves to pieces. There is really no peace for Londoners.
As for the invalids, writes the physician, "it is simple
murder with them." And there is no doubt that he is
right Humanity is a poor thing. It requires sleep to
arrest its decay, " sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of
care," and modern civilization, in this detestably selfish, weak
and grovelling age, will not let it have it

It is not only in London, but in all country towns that

292 THE BETTER SELF.

this game is played. A judge, whom we all respect — for
happily our judges have achieved that reputation that the
very culprits themselves have the greatest confidence in
them — lately complained that he could not hear the wit-
nesses nor calmly reflect upon the case, because of the
continual shrieking of a railway engine, and that he and the
bar were suffering from a sleepless night from the same
cause. But what did that matter to the railway company ?
If A, B, and C form themselves into a company, and get a
Bill through Parliament, have they not a right to bully, ruin,
and disturb the peace of all the rest of the alphabet ? It
really seems so now.

This question of the peace and quiet of all classes
is a most important one. We are, by depriving rich and
poor of it, shortening human life, weakening human efforts,
and destroying human reason; for a man does not live
long, nor happily, nor wisely, if he is in a state of war.
It is neither good for nations nor for men as individuals.
There was a wise King of England, who has, perhaps
more than any other monarch, a double reputation. In
the one he is known as Shakspere's Harry of Richmond,
a resolute, energetic, and brave hero, who brought happi-
ness to England by slaying Richard III. In history he
is known as a politic, saving, somewhat mean monarch,
Henry VII. But no one doubts his wisdom ; and his
prayer for the body-politic was always for peace. Like

PEACE. 293

Lord Falkland, he had always the words " peace ! "
" peace ! " upon his lips ; and it is said never commenced
a treaty without the words, "When Christ came into the
world peace was sung, and when he left it peace was
bequeathed."

But we must remember to whom it was bequeathed ;
that it was only given to men of gentle will. Beyond
this the very goodness and peace of some is a motive to
others for aggression. " I am for peace," said David pro-
phetically : " but when I speak, they make them ready for
war." A calm, wise man is often mistaken for a coward ; and
the very way to provoke an insult from some base natures
is to be as quiet and peaceful as you can. It does not
speak very well either for European or American politi-
cians to note that the peaceful policy of Great Britain,
the only really great Power in the world which embodies
peace in its political programme, has been construed into
a sign of weakness and decline.

Peace of body is of course true health, which the
wisdom of the world, of ancient and modern . sages, has
pronounced the greatest of all blessings. In fact there
is nothing like it. No amount of riches can console one
for the want of health. It may be thrown away in the
pursuit of money; but millions of money cannot buy it.
To attempt to compare money to health is simply folly, —
the things are not in the same parallel, not upon the

294 THE BETTER SELF.

same platform. As to genius, beauty, or power, they will
not stand the comparison. What can? All these — birth,
power, beauty, position, youth, all that man covets — are
subsidiary to health. They are very nice, very pleasant,
very delightful with it; but they are nothing without it
And the more we know of anatomy and physiology, and
the thousand chords, nerves, arteries, and bones of this
wonderful house we live in, the more we wonder at having
on the whole so little the matter with us. Some of our
great modern philosophers have demonstrated, in an irre-
fragable way, that Infinite Wisdom should have made us
perfect, and that this structure of ours should not decay,
nor grow weary, nor be diseased, nor do anything which
it ought not to do. Before the fall of man, man was
doubtless perfect; but when death and disease, and the
great enemy of peace, sin, came into the world, that
blessed state gave place to one in which pain and sick-
ness were to be great teachers, and to serve their turn.
And now, when we are made so strong and beautiful, we
can only wonder why we are not made blinder, weaker,
and smaller. If we marvel at our ill health, we also
wonder at our wondrously constructed bodies, and cry —

" Strange that a harp of thousand strings
Should keep in tune so long ! "

We all desire this peace of body, and almost all of us
can command it, presuming we are not of those whose trials

PEACE. 295

commence before they are born, and who carry in their
bodies, the conquering ensign of hereditary death, and the
stigma of some incurable disease. To such, the entire
health and peace of the body is never known ; that blessed
state which almost all the young have ; in which the noble
animal called man is utterly unconscious of having nerves,
teeth, a tongue, a heart, a head, a stomach, a throat, a back-
bone, feet, hands, or indeed anything but a stomach, of
which he or she is pleasantly reminded by a strong appetite,
the satisfaction of which three times a day at least, is a pure
and undiminished pleasure. Those are the days — those the
rosy hours of life.

" Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven."

That is what we call peace of body — true peace. When a
man knows that he has a head upon his shoulders, by rack-
ing thoughts, which make it ache, and a heart, by the
remorse which tears it, the unrequited love which wounds it,
and the sorrow which makes it quiver and rebound, he has
lost that health. When his stomach refuses to give him
appetite or nourishment, his feet wander and grow feeble,
and " his bones are smitten with a sore disease," so that
he "could roar from the very disquietude of his heart,"
his peace has fled for ever.

But a man often has the power to keep well, if he likes ;
and a life of useful work and temperate living brings on an

296 THE BETTER SELF.

old age like a mild and good Winter, "frosty but kindly."
Old Adam, in " As You Like It," the only part, except the
Ghost in " Hamlet," in which Shakspere ever played, has a
capital recipe — for peace of body, at least —

" Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty :
For in my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,
Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo
The means of weakness and debility ;
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly."

It is pleasant to know that the portrait of sweet Will, to
which Ben Jonson has written such a strong attestation as to
its excellent likeness, is said to have been taken in the
antique costume of the part wherein he delivers so wise a
lecture to young men.

" Peace I give unto you," relates to the peace of mind
which the great Physician of our souls knew was of more
importance than the other. Its motto might be, " Without
Me, nothing;" for, indeed, its absence ruins everything;
and that, too, is very easy of acquirement, while it is the
most seldom acquired of all. The envious, restless, active
man, does not get it. He who wants faith in God or in
man must be without it ; he who is covetous and envious
must, perforce, go without it ; he who loves gold, power,
greeting, friends, and all the good things in the world, must
often miss it He wants more than he can get ; and want

PEACE. 297

is, perforce, his master. He who plots against the peace of
others, and lays mines to blow into the air the fortunes of
his rival, loses it ; he who gives himself over to any folly
or sin must go without it; for although the sin may be
pleasant for a time, hereafter it will reproach him ; and in
the dead of the night, when the rain is on the roof, and the
south wind sighs round the corners of the house like a
wailing ghost, and the long shadows cast by the night light
tremble and flicker, the poor man will know what he has
lost. Poor man ! why should we say so ? We naturally
hate these disturbers of human peace — those who rob the
orphan, and devour widows' houses ; those who sweep the
poor man's gains into their pockets, and trouble all good
men with their ungodly greed. There are some pious souls
who insist that part of the happiness of the good will be
the eternal contemplation of the destruction and punish-
ment of sin, and that wickedness will be perpetually
reminded of its miserable folly by a perpetual state of
misery and an utter want of peace.

We go not so far with them, but we certainly pity not
the wicked when they get pinched in this world. When the
rogue has a rope round his neck, and the rascal yells out at
the whipping post, we have no maundering pity for them.
They had a thousand warnings before they got so far as
that ; they occasioned tears and groans enough ; they gave
pain enough from the time when they disobeyed their

298 THE BETTER SELF.

father, mother, pastors, and masters, to the days when they
broke a poor woman's jaw with an iron chisel for the sake
of a few coins, or disabled a child for life for the gratifica-
tion of a lower passion. Pray Heaven for these silly men
that their punishment comes in this world. Let us ask
that conscience may waken and haunt them as they lie at
home or walk abroad, that they may never know sweet
peace of mind, that they may toss restlessly upon their
couch, and that every ill-gotten fruit may turn to dust and
ashes in their mouths. Let us pray for this.

But indeed we need not. Good supplications are
answered before they are made ; all that any good man
can pray for is the will of God, and that we know is against
the wicked and on the side of the good. To the latter he
gives peace of mind ; the former has none of it, and is ill at
ease. He is the man who flieth when no one pursueth,
and who suspects everybody to be a rogue because he
knows that he himself is one. He it is who never gets any
satisfaction out of anything ; to whom all is barren, and for
whom every fruit is tasteless, and every pleasure vapid, idle,
and worthless. He may call in the doctor ; but he is of no
use, for who indeed " can minister to a mind diseased ? "

" Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain ;
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
That weighs upon the heart."

PEACE, 299

Shakspere is, as usual, true in everything. The grief of
guilt does indeed prey upon the heart ; and some terrible
criminals who have battled long with life and fought hard
with the devil, have died of degeneration of the heart. The
walls of that muscular organ have grown so thin that the
finger of a child could pierce them, or the blood thrown
back upon it by the turmoil of the brain has ruptured it,
so that the man has died. He that plays with the devil
need be cunning indeed. At best he spends a few years
in gilded misery, and knows not even then how bad a
bargain he has made.

But the good, conscientious, honest man, cannot well be
without peace. Seasons may go wrong, and the world be
disturbed, as it is at present, but having done his best, he
awaits the turn of the tide. He alone is happy when others
are fleeing away over half the earth to dissipate their
thoughts. He enjoys the landscape from his cottage door,
or the view of the housetops from his back parlour window.
Says jog-trot Shenstone : —

" Would you taste the tranquil scene,
Be sure your bosoms are serene :
Devoid of hate, devoid of strife,
Devoid of all that poisons life :
And much it 'vails you in their place
To graft the love of human race."

Well, you may find it difficult to do that, remembering
what the human race is ; but you can cultivate the true four-

3 oo THE BETTER SELF.

leaved shamrock — fear of God, faith, hope, and charity —
and you will find even that. The human race has become
so silly and changeable of late, so fond of innovation, so
ready for pictured finery, bran new politics, tinselled and
illustrated worship, and so ready to abandon the safe old
ways for that which is a mere novelty, that it finds not
favour with good men, and is hardly the ground whereon to
cultivate true peace of mind. For the chief source of that,
we all look somewhat higher ; — far above the tree-tops and
the mountains and the high-sailing clouds — far above earth
— even to Heaven itself.

THE END.

Printed by William Moore <5r» Co.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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